Earthenware jars and piles of herbs were frantically examined, sorted, and either collected on a table that had been quickly swept clear or tossed carelessly away.
Outside, the howling grew louder over the cries of fear.
The boy had no skill with a bow, had never held a blade. His hands had a fraction of the wear that the others of his village wore from work in their fields or workshops. Instead, his were small and soft, used to handling plants and people with great care under his grandfather's tutelage, the most skilled healer known for miles around. A soft-spoken man that the boy had spent his short life learning the nature of ills and cures from.
Only now, what plagued his village was not a sickness, but an unknown menace that had already reduced two nearby villages to ruin, leaving nothing but homes gutted by fire and mutilated corpses marked with the foulest symbols of chaos.
A roar sounded clearly above the yelling of the young men of the town, terrified farmers and laborers pressed into a militia that stared out into the moonlit woods with ashen faces and clutching makeshift weapons with shaking hands.
The boy's first instinct had been to run, to hide, a primal reflex that screamed at him to get away, far away from the things that approached. But another feeling had surfaced, one that his grandfather had given him, one that pushed him away from the hidden cellar where the children were secreted. The capacity to work quickly and calmly when someone's life was in danger, when fear and uncertainty might cloud his judgment when squeezing on a limb drenched in fast-flowing blood or adding just enough of this powder to a mixture in front of a sickly, dying child.
He could feel them now, and in a moment's pause, he thought he could almost see them, through the trees and the darkness and the very walls of the small hut. But there was no time for a second moment to think on the first, and the boy dashed from the small hut, his home, arms laden with what he hoped might help combat the evil outside.
"Get up there, damn you! I swear, in Sigmar's na-boy! What are you-"
"Poison!"
The slim child slid to a stop in the mud in front of the town's only real soldier, a graying bear of a man who'd once patrolled the Empire's roads before the weight of age had forced him to retire.
"For your arrows, blades…"
The boy was not used to exertion, and he stopped for breath as the old man before him took one of the jars he held, the creased face breaking a smile.
"A cure for what ails us, eh boy?"
"Aye!"
The bear laughed and yelled once more, waving the jar above his head. In a few painfully long minutes, a handful of men stood with foul-smelling rags seeped in dark liquid wrapped about spearheads and pitchforks, and pots of viscous fluid laid open before those fewer men with bows, the tips of arrows resting within and soaking up the essences of monkshood, nightshade and stranger things.
Before them, the fields around the village sat quietly under the moonlight that filtered through the clouds. Eyes strained into the night and fixed on a figure that emerged from the edge of the woods, a hulking, misshapen form that raised something above it's head that seemed far too big for any man to hold in only one hand. For a moment, there was no wind, no sounds of birds or insects, even prayers ceasing as men's breaths stilled in the quiet.
The distant figure roared, and it was echoed a dozen times over, shadows leaping from the forest and taking form to race across the fields. Some were furred, some horned. Some ran like men, others loped on all fours. But all cried out with rage and bloodlust, the beastmen charging forwards with fang and claw and crude weapons bared.
The once-soldier raised his bow. He'd seen the other villages, read the devastation with a grim and practiced eye. Saw from where they launched their attacks, stood where they had stood and looked out, seeing the same things they had. They had appeared, thank Sigmar, right where he'd expected them.
"FIRE!"
His first arrow struck true, and the bleat of pain from the goat-thing and the sight of it tumbling into the dirt to lie unmoving shook the other men into action. Arrows and slung stones flew out, to pass harmlessly by or fall short or even to raise a cry of pain and make a beastman stumble.
A bowshot distant, and one had been cut down.
Halfway across the field, more and more shots began to land among the beastmen ranks while their warcries grew louder still, and they sent stones and crude weapons through the air to make men dive for cover and hesitant to raise their heads once more.
Close enough now to see exactly what kind of monsters the men were fighting, what kinds of beasts each thing parodied. A wolf-headed man ran forward despite the spear in his gut, mouth filled with blood and rabid froth. A creature like a stag standing upright took a heavy sling bullet square on a knee, falling to the ground headfirst and casting dirt and debris into the air as it brayed and thrashed in pain.
Close enough now to smell them.
"LIFT!"
Hidden and waiting, men pulled on thick ropes with all their might, rows of stakes lashed together lifting out of the dirt and into the path of the charging beastmen. The sight alone of it knocked men back, of the chaos-spawn falling upon the sharpened wood, and the men picked themselves up only to scramble further away from the screaming, convulsing figures that pushed themselves forward and swung their weapons even as the wood was driven deeper into them.
The lord of the pack then appeared, an arm alight with sickly green flame that traced unholy markings upon one misshapen arm, swinging a massive club with the bloated limb to smash away barricade and beastman alike. Its eyes carried a raw, dangerous intellect, and it stared ahead at the puny human before him, the leader of one pack recognizing the leader of another. The instincts of both took over, as monster and soldier ignored those around them. The club smashed into the ground once more, the owner roaring from the depths of it's twisted gut. The soldier set aside his bow and picked up a worn halberd, beaten metal and creaking leather adorned with the fading colors of his regiment, an old prayer sounding from an even older throat.
The boy watched it all unfold before him, a scene the likes of which he could never have imagined.
As man and beast clashed around them, the two champions faced each other. The beastlord rushed forwards as the old roadwarden calmly set his halberd into the dirt, waiting to receive the charge. The haft, almost eight feet long, still came up short as the beast stopped a foot from the blade and swung his club in a wide arc. The man slid backwards, having expecting the strike, and with surprising speed for a man his age, stepped forward into the opening and jabbed straight ahead at the beast's neck.
The tip of the old weapon, lovingly maintained and freshly sharpened, didn't even scratch the beastlord's skin. The club's return swing sent the old man through the wall of the home behind him, to land lifeless before the young healer, who stared down in shock even as the beastlord strode inside and raised his weapon once more.
For the rest of his life, the man could never quite explain what he felt at that moment, why he did not run or cower in fear, how he could look up at the chaos mutant before him so calmly as the weapon came thundering down, reaching up to stop it with those small, soft hands.
The scream cut through the walls of the broken home, through the din of battle, clear upwards into the night sky, and both sides, against all reason, paused in their fights to look to the source of it. The mighty beastlord fell out of the hole he'd made in the wall with the warrior's body, his skin where the man-child had touched him burning with violet balefire. It refused to be quenched, no matter how much he slapped at it, no matter how deeply he sank he hands into the mud. It spread, burning away flesh and sinew, crackling loudly as it touched the mark of chaos, green flame and violet energy snapping at each other.
Bright amethyst won over pale green, and almost emboldened by the destruction of the chaos marking, the purple flame leapt over the rest of the beastlord's body, burrowing, eating, until the mightly creature finally stilled, leaving nothing but a lumpen skeleton held together by a few charred strands of muscle to fall into the dirt.
Following the Beastlord, the young man emerged from the hut, his body surrounded with arcs of violet lightning. He walked out slowly, looking at the burned body before him with a mix of fear and confusion on his face.
In rage and madness, a trio of beastmen ran straight towards him, screaming for blood. The boy looked at his hands, lit by violet flame, and still not completely understanding, raised them towards his attackers.
In an instant, they were blasted from existence.
The next day, the people did not go near the young man's home, did not look at it, did not speak of what had happened. Only hurried by and whispered prayers as they buried the dead and tended to the living.
Inside, the man lay awake in bed, unable to sleep and exhausted in a way he had never known, the events of the previous night replaying in his mind. He could not understand what had happened, how he had been able to do what he'd done. As scared as he was, a part of him was almost content. Some part of him had…expected this. Waited for this. Put all the strange things he'd felt in life into their proper context.
Sorcery. He'd heard the stories, the rumors, the tales of wizards that fought for good or ill, the fear that crept into men's voices when they spoke of it. He was...a Sorcerer. And that meant...he didn't know what that meant. Those stories weren't enough to calm his mind. But even if he didn't understand it, then perhaps...he could learn. Learn about it the same way he'd been taught about the body, of it's nature, of illness and medicine. Yes...that thought shone through the murk of confusion, clearing his mind and allowing his eyes to shut and his body to rest.
He awoke hours later, and once he had the strength to stand and gather some of his belongings, he walked around his home one last time, smelling the dried herbs, feeling the tools worn by generations of handling, and cleaned one last time, setting everything into their proper places before opening the door and stepping out into the sunlight.
Wrote this during sudden inspiration long into the night. Would like to continue, if muse permits.