by Warhammer
Einarr turned away from his cast-offs, studying the chamber in which he found himself. Grotesque mouth-like doorways littered the room, rotten teeth forming the frame of each opening. The Norscan studied them for a moment, then shook his head. Some unnatural instinct had guided him this far, leading him by the nose when reason should have left him hopelessly lost. He would continue to let it guide him.
Without further pause, Einarr sprinted towards one of the openings, darting past the jagged teeth, half expecting the immense jaws to snap close as he passed beneath them. Beyond the doorway he found a hall of rippling muscle, red and raw in the stagnant light that filled the palace. As he approached, the muscles heaved and pulsed, the walls smashing together with wet, meaty slaps, the ceiling and floor rushing together in a crushing embrace. After a moment, the muscle-walls withdrew, quivering with anticipation. Another step, and they crashed together once more, the force of their impact shaking the entire corridor. Einarr had no illusions as to the fate of anything trapped by such an impact. He also knew it was beyond the strength of a mere mortal to summon the speed and agility to surge past the walls before they reacted and smacked together.
The mark of Tchar smouldered against his hand, its glow barely seen by Einarr’s eyes. Thoughts rushed through his mind and he felt the impulse to close his hand around Orgrim’s fang. Einarr seized the talisman and with a fluid motion, he tore it from the neckband. The warrior stared at the sharp, savage tooth, imagining again the feral shape of the werewolf. He saw the ferocious spirit that had lurked within Orgrim’s flesh, the terrible power that had coiled within his body. Throwing his head back, Einarr shouted the werewolf’s name and plunged the fang into his arm.
The sharp tooth bit through his flesh, ripping deep into his body. Einarr collapsed as he felt a force pulse through him, racing through his veins like wyvern venom. He howled in anguish as his bones ground against one another, twisting and stretching beneath his flesh. His skin darkened, throbbing in pain as hair erupted all across his body. His screams thickened into a bestial growl as his face was pulled into a muzzle, as his teeth lengthened into knife-like fangs. His entire being was stripped away, twisting into the feral form of the ulfwerenar, only the hand bearing the mark of Tchar stubbornly resisting the change that thundered through him.
Einarr slowly rose from the floor, feeling the savage power of his new form pulsing through him. Fatigue was forgotten, injury was forgotten. All that he felt was a terrible strength, a strength that made his old body feel like a weak, simpering thing. It was a wolf’s howl that rumbled through Einarr as he revelled in his power. The lust for blood, the urge to feel flesh tearing beneath his fangs burned in his veins. Einarr turned his head, sniffing at the stagnant air, overwhelmed by the riot of sensation that flooded his nose. He could smell them, the festering slaves of Nurgle, crawling through the halls of the palace like so many maggots. With his new strength, he could kill them all, leave the corridors littered with their chewed bones and make the halls echo with their screams.
Before the beast could overwhelm his mind, Einarr recovered himself. He fought back the bloodlust that pounded through him, clinging to his retreating intellect as the wolf threatened to consume him. He stretched his still human hand, closing his fist around Alfwyrm’s cold steel. The touch of the sword seemed to lessen the grip of the beast, its savagery slinking into the black shadows of his mind.
Einarr turned back towards the quivering corridor, at the moving walls of muscle and slime. He had seen Orgrim, he knew what one of the ulfwerenar could do. But would it be enough, would even the werewolf’s animal strength and speed be enough?
The Norscan choked back his doubts and flung himself down the hall. The walls crashed together behind him, clapping together in a crushing embrace. Einarr did not pause, continuing to lope down the hallway as ceiling smacked into floor, wall drove against wall. He could feel the air being sucked back around him, so near did the writhing structure come to crushing him. It was as if the palace itself were trying to destroy him, possessed of a hideous, malevolent intelligence all its own. Einarr growled, sensing the sorcerous hand of Skoroth. But if the villain thought he would grind him into paste, he had not reckoned upon the Norscan’s determination.
The quivering maze of moving walls at last emptied into a gargantuan hall, a jagged fissure that cut its way through the palace. As Einarr gained the canyon of rotting flesh and dripping ooze, he could see the leprous sky festering overhead. The mangled, pathetic bodies that formed the walls of the canyon groped blindly for him, moaning in despair as they sensed his approach. The faces that gibbered from the walls were little more than shrivelled skulls, great wounds marking where eyes had been ripped from their sockets. Yet there was life, foul and vile, within each of them, the misery of men who discover too late the true nature of the god they served.
The stink of carrion wafted down from the heights of the canyon, and Einarr’s ears rang with the croaking of crows. His sharp eyes could see them, bloated and black, swirling about the upper reaches of the fissure, a great murder of carrion-eaters prowling the sky in search of more eyes to ease their abominable hunger. Warily, Einarr watched the crows circle as he stalked into the canyon, his every sense tuned to the rapacious birds and their croaking cries.
But the danger that set Einarr’s nerves on edge, the threat that tugged at his animal senses, did not lie with the greedy crows. Distracted by the murder swirling above him, the first Einarr became aware of his true foe was when a musky, rotten reek filled his nose. Einarr spun around as the familiar stench threatened to overcome him with terror. He felt the palace shake as something tremendous surged toward the canyon. The wall of fused, moaning bodies to his left exploded outward in a shower of ruptured meat and rancid blood as the reptilian behemoth ripped her way through the wall. Einarr cringed away from her, his hubris withering, his pride in his new strength crumbling as he again saw the awful shape of Bubos.
The dragon’s body surged through the rupture in the wall, heedless of the stinking blood that washed across her, oblivious to the broken, shrieking things she pulverised beneath her mass. The dragon swung her head about, her rotten tongue flicking from her jaws as she tasted the air. Einarr drew back as she lowered that frightful visage. He could see the dripping ruin of her eye, but seated within the filth was a ghastly figure. Robes of leprous flesh clothed his obese bulk, his withered, almost skeletal face looking impossibly small atop the bloated mass. Pockmark scars littered the man’s flesh, forming hundreds of fly-runes, the sign of Nurgle. Worms sprouted from the man’s arms, like a growth of squirming hair, while fat ticks clung to his chest. From the sides of the man’s head, ropy tentacles dripped, stabbing down into the jelly of the dragon’s broken eye.
Here, Einarr sensed, was the master of this obscene place, the Plague Lord himself, the loathsome horror that hid behind the name Skoroth.
The sorcerer turned his gaze to Einarr, and as he did so, Bubos’s head turned with him. His cracked, pallid lips pulled back from a mouth black with disease and decay. His rotten smile spread as other, smaller mouths opened along his cheeks and neck.
‘The stink of your hope offends my master,’ Skoroth told him. ‘There is no place for it here. Despair is the only salvation, to embrace misery and corruption, to praise the defiled and the decayed. From the moment you profaned my lord’s domain, your every breath was but futile pride. Bow to the inevitable, barbarian, for it has come to claim your soul.’
The dragon took a thundering step towards him, her claws shredding the carpet of bone that formed the floor of the canyon. A scathing hiss seeped past Bubos’s fangs, staining the air with her putrid hate. Einarr glared back at the dragon, at the sorcerer nested within her broken eye. The sneering, condescending smiles that pitted Skoroth’s face cut into him, fanning the embers of despair that still festered inside him.
Einarr railed against the sorcerer’s malignant spell. Tightening his grip on Alfwyrm he charged toward the dragon. Bubos pulled back in su
rprise, her immense bulk grinding against the screaming walls. Einarr struck at her, slashing her foreclaw with his sword’s keen edge. The dragon’s sludge-like blood bubbled from the wound as her rotting scales split beneath the blow.
The Norscan darted back as Bubos’s jaws snapped at him. The air grew cold and vile around him, taking on a green luminance. Beneath the fur of the wolf, he could feel his skin crawling. Atop the dragon, Skoroth’s hand was stretched towards him, blazing with a sorcerous light. Einarr ground his teeth as the malevolent magic washed over him, the armband growing a bit more blackened with each passing breath. Skoroth’s face twisted with frustration as he saw Einarr withstanding his sorcery. Scowling, he snarled at the dragon. Bubos surged forward, swiping at Einarr with her claw. The attack slammed into the wall of the canyon, ploughing through the moaning bodies like blood-filled twigs.
Bubos roared, sharing Skoroth’s frustration as Einarr slashed her leg again. With a mighty heave, the dragon launched herself at him, her entire ponderous bulk undulating forward in a great mass of scales and teeth. Einarr sprang at the wall, his bestial paws sinking into the tortured flesh that shrieked beneath him. He dug his claws into the rotting flesh and propelled himself upward, scrambling over the wailing bodies nimbly and rapidly. The dragon smashed into the floor below him, her enormity tearing through the layers of bones and flesh. The ground collapsed beneath her, sucking her down into a shallow pit of her own creation. The jagged bones that lined the crater stabbed into the dragon’s sides, digging deeper as she struggled to free herself.
Skoroth glared at Einarr as he scrambled up the wall of the canyon. He roared again at Bubos and the dragon lifted her head. Her jaws parted and she sent a sheet of cloying, sizzling pestilence shooting upward. The dragon’s aim was off, her deadly breath consuming the wall a dozen feet to Einarr’s right. Skoroth fixed Einarr with his gaze, concentrating even more fully than before, willing the blind dragon to see through his own eyes. Again Bubos spat death at Einarr, the fused bodies only a few feet below him withering into smoking husks that crumbled into decayed ash. Einarr dug his claws deeper into the canyon wall as the entire structure shuddered. The dragon opened her jaws a third time, horrible fires of disease and ruin gathering in her throat.
Einarr reached his hand to his necklace and tore the blackened stump of Thognathog’s finger free. Howling the ogre’s name, he flung the desiccated thing down at the dragon. Skoroth covered his head as the withered finger bounced off Bubos’s snout, rolling across the splintered floor. The sorcerer sneered and pointed a fat finger at Einarr, urging Bubos to finish him.
Neither dragon nor sorcerer noticed Thognathog’s finger smouldering on the floor. They did not see the glowing liquid that spread from the blackened stump, the viscous oil that shimmered with fell energies. The bones that littered the floor began to pulse with their own eerie glow, matching the rhythm of the luminous oil. Shards of bone tore from the ground, scuttling across the floor to sink into the shining muck. Soon entire skeletons were sucked into the pool, the glowing liquid darkening as more and more bone sank into it. As it darkened, the pool grew in size. Then, when it had lost almost all of its brilliance, the black pool began to bubble and foam. Einarr watched in amazement and disbelief as from the froth a huge skeletal hand emerged. A second soon followed, grabbing at the bony floor as it strained to pull free from the sludge.
It was then that Skoroth noted the taint of sorcery exuding from the pool. With alarm in his rheumy eyes, the plague worshipper bellowed commands to Bubos. The dragon gave one last blast of diseased fire, annihilating the wall beside Einarr, and swung her head towards the pool. From the blackened sludge, an enormous figure was rising, its skeletal limbs dripping shimmering slime, the sockets of its massive skull staring emptily at the reptile. Bubos roared at the undead thing, her hissing shriek echoing through the canyon. The immense skeleton simply stared back, taking a lumbering step towards her. Skoroth gestured at the abomination, a swirling stream of burning vomit exploding from his dozens of mouths, crashing against the skeleton in a wave of searing corruption. The dripping slime that coated the skeleton evaporated into smoke under the sorcerer’s attack, but still the horror lumbered onward. A second skull slowly pushed its way up from the undead thing’s collarbone, joining the first in its pitiless consideration of the dragon and her lord.
Einarr had no time to spare for dragons and undead ogres. As the skeletal monster closed upon Bubos, the Norscan struggled to keep his hold on the swaying, ruptured walls. The bodies beneath his hands crumbled and rotted, dripping down in liquid foulness to splash the floor below. The dragon’s pestilential flame continued to eat away at the living walls of the canyon, devouring them with insatiable hunger. The crows, agitated by their quaking rookeries descended in a black cloud of mangy feathers and rusted beaks to peck and claw at him. Einarr felt their talons ripping into his flesh, felt their stabbing beaks pounding against his bones. He howled and raged, striving to both maintain his grip and fight off the furious flock. Then his hand closed around his necklace once more and he knew that he was not alone. He knew what he had to do.
There was no time to consider the horror as he ripped Birna’s tongue from the necklace. He screamed the huntress’s name, tearing the sound from the depths of his heart. His canine jaws snapped closed around it, devouring it with the raging hunger of a true wolf. Einarr sucked the abominable meat down, struggling against the revulsion that shuddered through him. When the taste of flesh was gone from his mouth, he opened his jaws once more. It was not the howl of a wolf that thundered from his muzzle, but the sharp, keening cry of a bird. The frenzied murder that swarmed around him flew away, obeying without question the shrill cry he had uttered.
Einarr turned his head, glaring downward at Bubos and Skoroth. The skeletal ogre was straining against the dragon, its thin arms wrapped about the reptile’s snout, its bony fingers tearing into her flesh. From her head, Skoroth continued to send bursts of fell magic slamming into the monster, but spells alone did not seem enough to stop it.
The Norscan watched the struggle for a moment, then glanced back at the enraged crows still filling the sky above the canyon. He threw back his head once more and an avian shriek wailed through the fissure. A storm of black feathers shot downward, descending upon the dragon in a tempest of animal fury and rage. The dragon vanished beneath the croaking, cawing mass. Einarr could hear her painful cries as she writhed beneath the assault. Her noxious flame flicked through the swarm, hundreds of crows burned from the sky. Skoroth’s diseased sorcery flashed from the thick of the flock, splattering feathers and bones across the canyon. Yet for every hundred that fell, a thousand more dove down upon them, squawking and slashing.
The wall shuddered beneath Einarr once more. He looked upward, feeling his hope wilt as he saw the great distance that yet lay between himself and the top. He looked back down at the floor of the canyon. The mark of Tchar glistened on his hand and Einarr reached to the band around his neck once more. His fingers closed around Urda’s rune eye. Again, some instinct beyond himself told him what to do. Howling like a beast, Einarr leapt down from the wall, plummeting toward the dragon fifty feet below.
Einarr crashed through the swarming cloud of crows, slamming into the top of the dragon’s head. He drove Alfwyrm into Bubos’s skull before his impact caused him to roll away. The reptile shrieked in agony as his sword punctured her festering brain. Einarr saw Skoroth turn away from his assault on the crows, watched as he struggled to control the dragon’s agony. The tentacles dripping from the sides of his head throbbed as he tried to force his will into her mind.
With a roar of rage, Einarr lunged at the sorcerer, smashing into his bloated bulk. Still trying to control the dragon, Skoroth feebly raised his hands to ward off the Norscan. Einarr drove his claw into Skoroth’s belly, ripping strings of rotting organs from his gut. Skoroth shrieked in agony, green energy spilling from his ghastly wound. His eyes snapped open as he abandoned his efforts to control Bubos, fixing
his hideous gaze fully on Einarr. For an instant, the warrior felt again the noxious touch of Skoroth’s sorcery against his skin. The arm band crumbled beneath his power, fading into a crust of decay as it drew the awful power into it. Einarr snarled in pain as the magic ward snapped and he was left exposed to the sorcerer’s power. He grabbed Skoroth’s arms, feeling the putrid skin slough away beneath his touch. Another roar of fury exploded from his jaws as, with inhuman strength, Einarr ripped the sorcerer from the cloying goo of Bubos’s eye socket. Skoroth flailed madly in his grip as Einarr lifted him overhead and hurled him to the shattered floor below.
Purple sludge gushed from the torn tentacles and the dragon thrashed wildly as she was plunged fully into a world of blindness. She lashed her head from side to side, striving to dislodge the warrior clinging to the edge of her eye socket. Einarr felt his arm almost pulled from his shoulder, such was the dragon’s desperate panic. He felt the rune eye burning against his palm. Shouting Urda’s name, he pushed the stone into the rotting jelly of the dragon’s eye. Then his hold on the dragon’s skull failed him and he was sent flying through the air. He slammed into the moaning, shuddering wall of flesh and withered to the floor.
Bubos lashed furiously against everything around her as molten agony coursed through her body. Her claw smashed down into the skeletal ogre, pulverizing the undead thing. Her fiery breath sprayed through the air, incinerating thousands of crows. Her powerful limbs ripped and tore at the ground, pulling her free from her pit, ignoring the stabbing fingers of bone that gouged her sides. Her forked tongue flickered from between her jaws, struggling to taste Einarr’s scent on the air. The dragon heaved upward, grinding the last remains of the ogre beneath her armoured belly. Einarr spat the blood from his mouth and watched the gigantic reptile begin crawling towards him.