All stories begin somewhere...
“Warlord,” Temerick greeted Rorn respectfully, coming in beside him. He could feel the orders going out, elements of the Kalden continuing to advance, while others cleaned up at speed. The battlefield was starting to burn white, and the looters were intent on their jobs, trusted by their clansmen to do it properly and claim their share.
“Sergeant, Corporal,” Rorn replied calmly, glancing at rider and mount. “I see you’ve had a good day.”
Temerick grinned despite himself, and Bill tossed his head. “Aye, sir. But it’s not over yet, I’m thinking.”
“Where are you advising we engage?” He nodded at some black specks in the distance, surely able to see them. In both their minds, The Map blew up to their local area, spun, and flat images rose about real-world images.
The bright red marker of the incoming Warpband earmarked for them was veering in their direction, obviously having spotted them. “How good are your riders?” Temerick asked, studying the scene.
“Skirmishers. We’ve no lancer tradition in Kaldenheim. Not enough horses,” Rorn stated calmly.
“Good enough. You’ll need some speed if you want to loop up behind them, and those birds haven’t seen your cavalry yet.”
Rorn nodded once, pointed. “Around there, we line up here?”
“There’s something going on with the terrain there, some hills and inclines we can exploit, especially with that self-moving bell tower of theirs.”
“Barus will take it out as the battle starts. A combination of lightning to weaken the frame and then twisting it into scrap will render it useless,” Rorn waved dismissively.
“That’ll work, too.” Temerick nodded as they plotted a course, bringing Rorn’s forces up over the battlefield where the mercenaries from the south had lost so badly, cleaning up the loot there, and getting into position for the other Warpband in the afternoon.
“Were they really that bad?” Rorn had to ask, glancing back at the riders keeping a safe distance behind them.
“They severely underestimated the strength of the enemy, and with no confidence in their own allies, cracked too soon. If they were unified from the start, obeyed orders promptly, and held their ground... yes, they could have won. But they were not here to win, they were here for an easy fight and gold, and they became the slaughtered.” Temerick shrugged. “They killed some of the enemy before they died, so they were good for something. Vivic them as we go.”
“We’ll also pick up their supplies,” Rorn said heartlessly. “I see one of the officers survived. He’s trying to screw up the courage to ask me if he can walk off with their baggage.” Both of them chuckled.
“Give them enough to leave the area. I doubt they want to stay here. Some of the horsemen have merits, but those spears... not a one,” Temerick spat.
“I’ll run them off. They are already lightly burdened. If they can make it to the Waystop, they’ll make it home. If not... eh.” It was not his concern. Kaldenheim was not a place that had sympathy for the cowardly or the weak.
“Well, let’s show them how to run a proper battle then, eh?”
---
“So, Slaughter Demon, Collared. Obviously a favorite of Klaw.” Rorn dismounted next to Grym, who fell in beside him, advancing on the burning, eight-foot demon waving around a zweihander like a short sword, leaving burning trails of cackling flames behind it. Its floating pupils fixed on Rorn heading towards it, as the horsemen circling it parted to allow him entrance.
“Jah. Butcher’s Sword,” the Dwarf snorted, eyeing the corpses of the men who hadn’t been able to get away from it fast enough. Their armor was cloven clean through, like seared cotton. The flesh below didn’t have much resistance, but the demon had still only managed to kill a dozen or so men, doing little but irritating the rest.
The Collar was annoying because it made ranged attacks almost impossible. It was a direct blessing of Klaw, and made the demon impossible to target with direct spells while reducing the damage of missile fire to next to nothing.
“Oh, a challenger, it is?” snarled the demon, bringing the burning sword around to face him. “You think you are sufficient to kill ME, Skruwl the Soul Burner?”
“Ah, that’s where the screaming comes from,” Rorn remarked, limbering up his Shield, as Mournfang hummed to life. The demon was capturing the souls of the slain with its Weapon to torment them...
Despite itself, the demon flinched as the rainbow soulfire mixed with golden enmity rose up... along with the polyhued-black Banefire.
“Hrn hrn hrn,” Grym chuckled, bringing up his own Shield, Slag rumbling like a furnace ready to blow in his hand. Its fires wouldn’t be effective here, and he couldn’t throw it usefully right now, but that was fine. He was a Dwarven Clanhammer, one of the toughest melee combatants there was... and silver soulfire was burning on his Hammer, too.
There was no further need for words. The two of them strode forwards, not bothering to charge, as this wasn’t going to take long.
The screaming, burning Blade crashed down on them as the battle-crazed demon leapt towards them.
Rorn counter-lunged and froze in the Archer Stand Thrust.
The burning Sword crashed down on his Shield... and didn’t pass through it like butter.
At the same time, Mournfang drilled right into the demon’s chest, and Rorn didn’t budge, taking the impact with inhuman strength and focus.
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Slag roared in to smash a kneecap, and then the edge of Grym’s Shield smashed that joint sideways, depriving this thing of its prancing agility. It tried to bounce back, and this time Rorn stayed right with it, leaving Mournfang in place as he reached out and grabbed one of the burning arms with his bare hand, wrenched it down, twisted, and forced it to bend in the direction of the leg that was already at thirty degrees to the side as he kicked its other flaming foot out.
Its head, way up there, came way down abruptly, looking right into Grym’s face as Slag came pounding in to meet it.
It had a hard head, burning horns and all, and the first blow didn’t crush it, knocking it back like a heavy pendulum. Rorn pulled it through and out, and as Grym spun with disconcerting lightness for someone so squat and heavy, the rebounding head came square into the Hammer again, and this time stuck.
Rorn dropped his grip, pulled Mournfang out of its body with a gout of feasting vivus, and one, two, three, chopped off the arms that were still trying to wave its Sword around. As it fell to the ground, bony hands still wrapped around the hilt, he finished the combination by chopping off the head above its Collar, even as it tried to wrench itself off of Slag and found it a bit hard as Grym twisted the Hammer and its neck into position for the coup de grace.
The demon collapsed to the ground, and the men around set up a cheer at the execution of the creature. Vivic flames spurted up, devouring the demonfire and quickening the process of it being Fed to the Land.
Slag came down with its axe backer once, twice, and the burning Sword broke under the precise blows. The wailing of released souls filled the air as they streamed past, fading away as they were sent to their proper fates; hundreds, thousands of them, more, the trophies of endless war waged in the name of Klaw.
Mournfang’s tip sent the Collar over atop the Sword; they’d be Burned together for the mana crystals to empower more Gear. The Disk with the Pattern was already on the way to roast them.
The riders had arrived late in the fight, but at the perfect time to break the maneuvering of the Warped forces, and rode down the Warp Sorcerer in the back and his bodyguards as they tried to evade Liiss’ magic coming in to wreak havoc among them.
The Warped Warlord had broken his Sword to Summon the Demon, obviously not as powerful as a favored Wizard, but definitely enough to be a terror to any mortal troops. A Weapon effect able to ignore armor in a fight was no joke, a +IV Slot effect called Umbral.
-“Armor is useless if it can’t serve as armor. You know the crap we fought that hurt us most... incorps of all kinds, reaching through your armor to flesh and soul, and the spells that went right through it, too. Yeah, you all want powerful armor, but first, you want armor that always works. Energize that Armor, or its going to be useless when you want it most.”-
Sage Sama’s words reverberated in his mind; Energize was the second effect he’d put in place. Thus, his Shield and Armor could both take the hits from this demon’s armor-ignoring Sword.
It also meant this Sword was a minimum of a Vier-Slot Weapon... before the Soul-capturing and Flaming effect. He was probably looking at Zeben, at least... which was damn near two hundred goldweight in mana about to be coughed up. Quite a prize!
That he was losing the use of an Umbral Weapon didn’t bother him at all. Melt it down and turn it into something clean and usable, piss off the Warp Gods. Any man insane enough to take up a Slaughter Demon’s Sword would likely turn into one, a risk hardly worth taking.
The Collar was something equally useful and precious, a direct gift from a god. Immunity to targeted magic, and almost immunity to ranged attacks. Definitely a powerful Toy.
It was going to Burn, too. Some Floating Wagons, and a lot of magical Armor and Shields, were going to come out of these two things.
Clean-up was going on around the field as the last of the Warped were surrounded and cut down. Some of the berserkers were having duels with one another, but he wasn’t worried about them. They had better Weapons and Armor than the Warped, and Khadifyr was there to goad them on with the Saga they were contributing to. Knowing they’d be Healed to full if they lived, the berserkers were going all out and making sure they got their share of glory.
It didn’t matter, as long as their enemies died.
There was a viable campsite about a mile away, with water access and good terrain around it. He didn’t see another Warpband within twenty miles, and had no intentions of leaving the Warp-free zone he had just helped expand and solidify.
There was an alert off to the east, and heads turned as the sky over there turned purple and green, and began to churn vertically, like a sideways tornado rolling across the land, with flashes of not-lightning, shrieking splits in the Veil letting loose energy that would take apart anything they cut through on the edges of spatial splits.
It was coming right towards them, but Rorn just watched it come, and those people who were starting to panic were shouted down by disgusted Marked, who were watching it with complete aplomb.
After all, they weren’t the first ones to witness a Chaos Storm plowing at them over these cursed Badlands.
---
The roiling spatial storm rolled right towards them, and the Kaldens watched it silently. Stone wave-hills warped and flowed like waves on an ocean, and everyone realized where they got their shapes from. The great rocks floating in the sky bobbed and shifted, the colors of the stones flowed through a hundred changes in seconds, from glittering crystal rainbows to inky darkness, and every combination in between.
Towering, shrieking, shaking the ground with Reality trembling, it swept down upon them-
And vanished a couple of miles away.
Rorn turned around, along with a few thousand others, and watched the sideways vortex flow out of nothing miles to the west, on the far side of this corridor of stability formed from the slaughter of the Warped. The blue sky above them didn’t change at all.
There would be things rising up in the wake of the storm, drawn to the stability of this area like an island in the sea. Some would be dropped here from Outside Creation, others Animated to impossible life by the energies from beyond the Veil.
There was more than Warped here to endanger them in the Badlands... as many of the Warped had found out.
Scouts began to head out towards that border, looking to see what would be coming towards them, and get them ready for the fight doubtless to come again. A distinct air of urgency prompted the burning and looting, and the unwounded moved out to secure their campsite, the Healers worked quickly to get the wounded back on their feet, and men groaned and complained as their day wasn’t over yet.
One hundred and forty-seven names would go into the scroll of the Saga being wrought here, Khadifyr was seeing to that. The tale of the battle, who did what and when, battle honors won by the valiant, would all be set down, to be read from to inspire those in future years.
Sage Sama had The Book, the record of the Ironblood, being added to even now. Kalden would have its own Saga, to be remembered by its own people.
------
Twenty minutes later, the first scouts reported dirt-colored, skittering creatures the size of great spiders, but with central multi-eyed polyps atop their mid-bodies, and legs that looked to be cleavers as well. They were miles off, but exploring everything curiously, scampering over stuff, and falling off most amusedly when they couldn’t support their own weight ascending surfaces.
Axiomatics of some kind, brought here in opposition to the Chaos on the Veil, and shunning the influence of it. They would probably head towards the Rift on general purpose, but if they scoured the area and found imperfect mortals, they’d be happy to clean his people up, as pitiless as brooms clearing dust out the door.
Rorn grunted. They had fought so many things in Nightmare. He wondered what could surprise him now...