The story of Rory McCallen and how his decisions will rock the warhammer fantasy world. Oh and warhammer is owned by Games workshop and not me.
Chapter 1: A bargain is struck
Blood…Its smell overwhelming me, its crimson color seemed to cover everything within my vision its metallic taste trickling down my throat. I've never been squeamish of blood or fearful of the spilling of it, but right now it was the most terrifying thing I could think of. Why? Because it was my own blood coating the gym's concrete floor, it was my blood whose smell was permeating the room. And it was my mortality that was being squeezed away by death's icy grip.
'Why do I have to die?' Was the first thing that popped into my head. 'No' I chided myself 'the better question is, why am I so damn weak?!'
I thought of my life up until this point and unsurprisingly there were few good memories.
Flashback 8 years ago (POV 3rd person)…
A bright yellow building stood in stark contrast to the gray buildings that surrounded it. Outside children play in the play ground adjacent to it. There are kids playing on the jungle gyms and on the opposite side of the playground kids playing baseball.
"The crowd's silent the score is 10 to 9, bases are loaded and it's bottom of the ninth. The next pitch could make or break the game. But no need to fear cause Jenson's pitching and he only needs one strike and…
"Shut up and throw the ball!'
"Alright already I'm throwing it!"
Meanwhile a kid with raven hair, and blue eyes with his nose buried in a red book is crossing the playground. His name is Rory McCallen a 10 year old loner, quiet and an orphan as of 2 weeks ago. His mother, the only family he had left after his dad ran out on them had been killed after the driver of a semi truck fell asleep at the wheel. Now all that was left of his mother were his memories and the book he was currently reading. So engrossed was he in his book that he wasn't paying attention to where he was going. So it was no surprise that he would end up walking into someone. Unfortunately that person was Jenson.
"I got i…oomph!"
"Sorry about that" said Rory untangling himself from underneath Jenson.
"You little ass, you made me drop the ball, come here!" He said picking him up by his collar.
End of Flashback
After that Jenson beat me so much that I ended in the hospital and then he made it a point to bully me. And now this, me beaten to the equivalent of hamburger on the night after our school reunion, all because I was stupid enough to believe that meathead actually had the decency to apologize to me after all he did to me.
'How could I be so stupid to believe him? God wh…' I stopped myself because at that moment I realized something 'When has God ever helped me out?!' My whole life had been nothing but misery and here this so called almighty entity hadn't even bothered to lift a finger to help me. 'Then why was I wasting my prayers on him?' I wondered.
"Indeed why waste your prayers on a God like him?"
"Who…" I used what little strength I had to scan the room with my eyes but there was nobody there.
"Why not pray to a true god" I felt the ground buck and convulse under me, the windows began to shake as a violent wind began outside, and the gym lights began to flicker on and off.
"A true god…" The room shook harder, the wind picked up becoming loud like a hurricane about to pound on the shores of some coastal village.
"Like me"
There was a sudden and absolutely horrendous sound like nails on a chalkboard mixed with the pound of the surf and an otherworldly whistling sound and combined with thousands of tormented voices whispering incomprehensible and blasphemous secrets, and then…nothing. No sounds, no wind, no…pain.
"What the…" I opened my eyes (which I didn't even realize I had shut) and looked myself over. My clothes were still torn up but the bruises and contusions that once showed quite obviously given my pale skin were now gone. The deep laceration in my side that had caused me such pain had sealed up apparently on its own accord. My left eye once swollen shut because of the beating I had gotten, was now open and functional once more. To this day, I don't know why I decided to look up perhaps it was in some foolish attempt to thank God for this apparent miracle he had decided to bestow on me. Whatever the case, it was at that moment I realized something...I wasn't in the gym anymore.
I looked around but all I saw was the same strange swirling nebulous clouds painted impossible hues in which I could see numerous ghastly and unearthly shadowy figures gliding through them. Multi-colored bolts of lightning danced and jumped between the innumerable clouds. All of it was lit by some unnatural and cold light source which seemed to emanate from all sides. It was unnerving and yet oddly enough it was, soothing and pleasant in such away as to want to make me drift off and just sleep for all eternity until the universe grew old and all the stars would became cold and dull so as to fall from the sky like the fallen angels did so many innumerable eons ago. So long ago, back when the world was young and blissfully unaware of the horrors the universe had in store for its inhabitants. Thus it was only with a great deal of effort that I managed to stay awake. As I sat there I kept pondering over and over again 'How did I end up here?' It was something that perplexed me. How could I at one moment be lying in the gym knocking on death's door and then, suddenly appear in this weird ass place totally unharmed? It just seemed to defy all logical thought. Hell in my mind it seemed that the whole theme of this place was 'logic? Sorry never heard of it.'
The sudden feeling of eyes bearing down upon me snapped me out of my internal reverie and made me quite aware that I was being watched. I turned to find out who I was being watched by… and froze on the spot. I broke out in a cold sweat dampening my shirt and making it cling to my chest like a second skin. My pulse quickened, making me feel like I was about to burst a vessel and just stroke out right then and there. My breath seemed to catch in my throat keeping me from simply screaming my head off until my vocal cords tore from the strain. My eyes widened to such a size which simply put seemed impossible. My jaw went slack hanging open so much as to make a serpent envious. My arms hung loosely at my sides which quite fortunately (though I didn't think so at the time) prevented me from simply clawing my own eyes out at the horror of it all. And my brain seemed to simply seize and shut down in order to protect my mind from sensory overload and keep me from going stark raving mad. Why? Because starring at me was an entity so ghastly it would have made H.P Lovecraft curl up into a gibbering mass of insanity and incoherent babbling. The thing which, I realized to my further horror was holding me in its massive, pale, and talon like hand. The hand was attached to what was some spectral combination of an equally pale human arm and the tentacles inherent to squid and cuttlefish The arm seemed to slither rather than traverse an unimaginably long distance before ending at what appeared at first glance to be just another of the unnatural and amorphous clouds which filled the unholy space in the fabric of reality (if it was in reality at all). But on second glance its nebulous surface was revealed to have a somewhat (if barely) more definite shape of what appeared to be a face. A face dotted with innumerable eyes of numerous colors and seemed to at times shift and other times fade across its massive surface.
"W-what a-a-are y-you?" I choked out as best I could given the rather horrifying nature of the situation I was currently in.
"What I am is a rather difficult thing to elucidate to a lesser life form such as you. Rather the questions you should be asking are what is it that I want with you and what will you gain from it." It or rather (given the tone of voice) he said in a shifty and rather unctuous yet none the less threatening tone of voice which both writhed and resonated around inside the depths of my mind and at the same time seemed to have bypassed my ears altogether.
"O-okay then" I said as I tried (and failed) to regain an ounce of my dignity. Thankfully the combination of me being able to assign a gender to the entity (which humanized him somewhat and helped to ease my mind somewhat) and the indignation I felt over being called a lesser life form by this guy (even though he was more than likely right) helped me to recover from the shock of it all. "In that case what do you want with me?
"Now you're thinking like an intelligent being. In any case I'm here to extend an offer of sorts." He said in a voice that sounded like a thousand voices speaking at once.
"What sort of offer?" I answered rather incredulously but, given the situation I was in it was not entirely out of place.
"An offer that can be to the benefit of us both if you will only just hear me out." He said in such a way as to intentionally pique my inherent and rather egocentric interest to further myself and my gains.
"Okay I'm listening" I said while quashing the voice asking nay, begging me not to listen to this entity before me before I made a deal that would potentially doom my very existence to a fate worse than the death I had waiting for me back on the floor of the gym where this whole mess started.
"My siblings and I have been watching you for quite some time little one and we find you rather interesting. You have the potential to change the very world you live on but your lack of power holds you back from doing so".
"Don't remind me" I said thinking back to the monologue I had with myself earlier.
"Well, what if I was to say we can give you the power you desire?"
"I'd ask, what's in it for you?"
"Ah, an inquisitive mind I see. Very good, after all an inquisitive mind is a healthy mind I always say."
"Some may argue against that, that an inquisitive mind is a dangerous thing." I said "and that it is better to keep a closed mind rather than risk the dangers which come with acquiring knowledge".
"Only those who are themselves close minded and lack both the ambition and fortitude of will to face the risks and challenges that come with the search of higher knowledge adopt that ignorance is bliss stupidity as a philosophy. And I personally know through my observations of you Rory that you are not the sort of person to yield to such trivialities as risk or danger when it comes to the search for knowledge as well as power. " He said rather confidently.
"In any case what we're offering is this, my siblings (who you shall meet in due time) and I shall grant you the power to make all those who would stand against your goals and dreams submit to you or die, and in return you will serve us and help to further our own goals."
"So basically I become your slave…"
"I personally prefer vassal, slave is such a derogatory word considering all that you would acquire through this agreement."
"Okay so I become your vassal and I get this amazing power which is…"
"The power over the warp also known as the Immaterium or, the realm which we are currently in right now, with it you can split the earth, rain fire from the sky, call bolts of lightning to smite your enemies and other suitably dramatic and destructive things. So what do you say will you accept?"
I thought of everything this being was offering me and it sounded pretty good but concerns continued to gnaw at that back of my mind.
"Do you even have a choice in the matter?" He said voicing my concerns.
"Yah, hey… wait a minute! YOU CAN READ MY MIND?!" I screamed horror and apprehension clearly written across my face as I realized this thing could see every hope, dream and secret that resided in the confines of both my conscious and subconscious mind.
"Yes" he said in a rather amused sort of voice. "I and along with some of my siblings and their vassals are psychic it is, just another of the many perks that come with accepting this offer. And as to your question…well, see for yourself." He said, and suddenly the sound of static and white noise filled the air followed soon after by the same horrendous tearing sound as when I had left the gym floor and in the middle of the multi colored void directly to my left opened what appeared to be a hole in reality. Or so I thought, for on closer inspection I realized there was something within the void, an image of sorts at first foggy but gradually the image cleared up enough so as to allow me to make out the image of…myself lying on the gym floor still covered in blood my eyes rolled back deep into the back of my head and at the same time some sort of misty white stuff (for lack of a better term) was seeping out of the deep laceration in my side.
"What? H-how can that be? GAH! WHAT IN THE HELL IS GOING ON?!"
It is quite simple really, you are not actually here or rather your physical body is not here. The fact is your body is still lying on the floor of the gym back in your home dimension. However your soul and consciousness are here. The body you have now being nothing more than a psychic construct, as we speak your life force is escaping your mortal form and should you not answer soon it may be too late to save you. So to answer your question yes, you do have choices those being going back to your body and dying or accepting the offer at hand and becoming the quite possibly the most powerful being in this universe or any other, well besides my siblings and I of course." He finished
"Wait couldn't you just patch up my old body and return me back home?"
"Hahaha, why would I do that? I mean after all, I certainly won't be getting anything out of that so what's point?" He said quite mockingly.
I looked at the image of myself lying there on the gym floor dying and thought hard but still one question was nagging me and despite the fact I knew he could read my thoughts, I voiced it any way.
"And what would happen if I was to fail in whatever tasks you required me to do?" I asked somewhat hesitantly.
"I would say… that it is better that you simply avoid failing altogether and let us leave it at that. Now Mr. McCallen, what is your decision?" He said
I thought hard about my available options. On the one hand I knew that he was not the sort of person to do something for nothing (his little laughing fit before had assured me of that) and would probably stab me in the back if I were to in some way fail him. On the other hand like he said the only other option was death, and I refuse to die if it is within my power to avoid it. So seeing that I really didn't have a choice in the matter, my choice of action seemed rather clear.
"Okay I accept your offer but before you do anything answer me this question. You've never once mentioned your name and since you obviously know mine, I find it prudent that I should know yours. I mean what sort of agreement would it be if the parties involved know nothing of who they are making said agreement with." I said feeling somewhat uneasy about the decision I had made.
"Oh forgive me you're absolutely right." He said and despite not having a face I could tell he was smirking over my decision. All around me the shapes in the clouds began to move around at a frantic pace becoming even more twisted and chaotic then they had been before
"My name …" He said as his body began to glow and bolts of pure power danced across his fingertips.
"Is Tzeentch" at that instance the bolts of power collided with my body.
And the world seemed to explode.