Disclaimer: I don't own Kuroinu (and what I know from it, I learned from fan fiction) or Warhammer Fantasy (though I know a bit more about it than the other one). Any resemblance of any character or event in this story to anyone or anything in real life is purely coincidental. No screaming skulls were launched via catapult in the making of this story... that I know of.
Before I begin, I'd like to thank traffic jams. Horrible, horrible, three-hour-long traffic jams spent near the back of a packed bus as a thunderstorm did its worst outside, like the one that spawned this story. If not for that traffic jam and my questionable mental processes due to fatigue, I wouldn't have been able to write this. The other factors that partly inspired this story are StaffSergeant's The Night Unfurls (a great crossover with Bloodborne, you should check it out if you haven't yet), The Eostian Crusade by Knight of Ember (another great crossover, this time of Medieval II Total War) and Wimblegurk Brigade's Rebellion challenge.
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Prologue
'And he did say war...'
The world was coming to an end.
Chaos reigned in the ruins of what was once the Imperial city of Middenheim. The men and beasts of the howling north, the assembled might of the Ruinous Powers, descended upon the city, massacring its screaming populace and reducing its proud monuments to the ground. Though the Doomed Legion attempted to make a stand in the city, though the horde's leaders – the warrior Sigvald and the troll-king Throgg – had perished in battle, the forces of Chaos could not be stopped. Nagash, Incarnate of Death, fled south to attempt to reach the other Incarnates. Arkhan the Black and his Morghast forces made their defiant last stand, but they too were swept away by the tide of Kurgan and monsters, with Arkhan last seen disappearing beneath a wave of charging beasts.
The skies over Middenheim darkened, the sun blotted out by slate-grey clouds and the thick smoke coming from the ruined city. Forked lightning flashed in unnatural colours, and thunder pealed like the death-knell of the world. Perhaps the Incarnates had failed in their ritual, dying together in an attempt to save the world. Perhaps they died separately, never being able to enact the ritual at all. It mattered not; the victory of Chaos was inevitable.
However, in the Great Park of Middenheim, in the middle of an open field surrounded by rubble, smoke, and corpses, one creature – one man – still stood against the inevitable: the Tomb King Settra the Imperishable, King of Nehekhara. Gone was most of the finery that adorned him in life, death and undeath, and he was little more than rotting, wounded flesh held together by slowly-disintegrating bindings and clad in broken armour. There was a gaping hole where his right lung once was, a broken spear stuck out of his left thigh just above his left knee, and his forehead was cleaved almost neatly in the centre by a barbarian's axe, but the undead king remained defiant even after suffering wounds that may have killed a mortal man several times over. Holding his khophesh two-handed, he braced himself as the beasts and madmen charged at him once more.
A dragon ogre was the first to attempt its luck, charging at Settra with the force of a great cannon's shot. The king ran towards the beast, leaping to the left at the last moment and slashing sideways with his khophesh. His sword slid through meat and bone. The dragon ogre fell forward, one of its legs cut off, and Settra delivered the killing blow: a quick chop to the back of the neck.
A troll then ran towards Settra, its club raised in preparation for an attack, and to his right, a giant reached down to grab him. Settra slashed upwards, divesting the giant of the fingers of its right hand and causing it to step back and roar with pain, and he turned to the left to and deal with the troll. He rolled to one side just as the troll's club impacted the ground he stood on, and he gave a great downward chop that lopped off the creature's arm. His next slashes opened up the troll's gut and cleanly severed its head from its body. More beasts and men then came as a disordered mob, each one attempting to win the glory of slaying Settra the Imperishable, and each one being slain in return. Many frantic hours passed, or perhaps only a few minutes. In the heat of battle, time lost all its meaning.
After yet another round of frenzied combat, the forces of Chaos fell back, circling Settra like hyenas around a wounded lion. The corpses of a dozen more of their compatriots lay around the undead king.
'I tire of slaughtering your minions!' Settra roared at the soot-black heavens. A mob of Kurgan tribesmen came at him, screaming the names of their gods, and he dealt with them with a flurry of strikes.
'Come down here, false gods! Face me! Know the consequence of daring to command Settra!'
A great bolt of bruise-purple lightning flashed, creating a short, nonsensical maze across the sky, and thunder that sounded like the screams of a thousand damned souls boomed. The ground shook, more bolts of lightning raced across the sky, and Settra noticed that the barbarian hordes, who were only beginning their attack again, were starting to fall further back.
A howling portal to the Realm of Chaos opened up in the space in front of Settra, and from it strode forth a nightmarish vision from the depths of Man's fears. It bore the outline of a gigantic vulture in the shape of a man, yet its form seemed to shift constantly, phasing in and out of reality and seeming to change in texture and composition with every passing minute. It wore robes and carried a staff, lending it an aura of authority, and the air surrounding it came alive, crackling and churning due to the immense magical power emanating from it. It was a Lord of Change, a greater daemon of the Changer of Ways.
Settra took up his blade and ran towards the daemon, intending to cut it down before it can cast any spells, but it called upon a gust of phantom wind that blew him backwards. Another troll attempted to attack him as he staggered backwards, only to be met with the fate of its other fellows as he quickly regained hit footing. However, the Lord of Change raised its left hand and fired a bolt of sorcerous lightning, hitting Settra squarely in the chest and causing him to drop his khophesh. The daemon then called upon its phantom wind again, lifting Settra in mid-air and putting him at the level of its face.
'Hail to thee,'it said, its voice like a multitude speaking at once. 'Settra the Imperishable, ruler of rubble and ruin. A king shorn of a kingdom. My Master offered you power and dominion far beyond what you have achieved in life if you would but serve Him, and you chose to defy Him. I come now see you punished as a king so deserves.'
'Better to die a king than to live eternally as a slave,' Settra said, gritting his teeth, shaking as he attempts to break free from the wind. 'Settra does not serve. Settra rules.'
'So be it,' the Lord of Change replied. With a wave of its staff, it called upon a ball of blue-hued soul-fire and launched it at Settra. The king fell to the ground, on his knees and ablaze with the unnatural flames.
'Settra… is deathless,' he said as his bindings burned and his flesh sizzled. Struggling against all odds, he willed himself to move and picked up his sword. 'Settra is eternal!'
The Lord of Change simply prepared another spell to finish Settra once and for all.
Against all odds, Settra jumped towards the Lord of Change, launching himself upward on burning legs. The daemon tried to unleash another spell, but Settra was too quick. He slashed wildly, catching the daemon in the knee. It screeched in pain and tried to fly away, but he slashed, cut, and hacked with all of his strength, focussing the will that ever drove him, which forged a kingdom from a divided people, drove armies onward, and defied death twice, towards the act of slaying this daemon-spawn. Magical flames blasted out of the many wounds the king opened on the daemon's legs and torso, and it was brought to its knees.
At the last, Settra, charred and blackened by the flames, stood over his foe. He raised his khophesh high, prepared to chop the Lord of Change's head off as a final act of defiance. But before the king can lower his sword, the daemon mustered his remaining strength and waved his staff, casting a desperate spell. An orb of light emerged from the staff, and in the next instant, Settra was gone. Its strength fully spent, the daemon collapsed.
'If… if Settra must rule,' the Lord of Change muttered as it struggled to stand, its voices disjointed, 'then... let him rule... elsewhere.'
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Celestine dreamed.
In her vision, her mind's eye wandered far above a vast desert. The sun hung oppressively in the middle of the cloudless sky, revealing an endless vista of stone and wind-blown sand dunes. As Celestine's vision moved forward, she noticed a thin black line in the sand. Her mind's eye moved closer to it, and to her horror, she saw it for what it truly is: a river, deadened and poisoned, and coloured a very dark red, the hue of drying blood. She wondered what may have caused such a travesty done to the river and whether the death of the river was responsible for the death of the entire land.
As she was lost in thought, though, Celestine's vision was drawn to follow the dead river downstream, and she saw two great pyramids on its two opposite banks. On the southern bank was a colossal black pyramid, one that seemed to swallow up all the light that touches it. She did not dare look at it for too long for fear that whatever lay within might take notice of her.
On the northern bank of the river was a shining white pyramid surrounded by a ruined city half-submerged in the sand. White it was dwarfed in size by the great black edifice on the opposite bank, Celestine saw that it was a massive structure as well, so large, in fact, that it overshadowed the ruined vaults, palaces, and statues of the city that surrounded it. As her vision grew closer, she saw that the smallest statues, which depicted wiry, muscular animal-headed men wielding great weapons, were more than twice her height.
Her mind's eye eventually settled on a rooftop overlooking a wide obelisk-lined square in front of the white pyramid. A series of altars lined the far side of the square, the side closest to the pyramid. Celestine watched the empty plaza, wondering what might happen next. As she looked, the funeral pyres in the far side suddenly lit up, and the vaults beside the pyramid opened up. A skeletal army of the dead, swordsmen, spearmen, archers, charioteers, and horsemen, marched forth, making no noise save rhythmic stamping of their feet as they walked. The statues that stood in front of the city's buildings moved as well, from the animal-headed guardians of the temples to the great leonine statues in front of the palaces. More statues, which resembled skull-headed scorpions and serpents, emerged from the sands. In a few moments, Celestine beheld a great host of the dead all gathered in the plaza, all of the warriors and constructs facing the white pyramid.
As she thought of what the goddess meant to show her through this vision, Celestine saw that the funeral pyres in front of the pyramid burned even brighter, and the great doors of the pyramid opened, and from the structure marched the serried ranks of what can only be described as the dead army's elite, striking with their ornate armour and their turquoise shields and led by a large skeleton carrying a golden banner and wielding a mighty flail. The skeletal elite parted into two lines, and from the pyramid emerged a large flaming chariot ridden by the king of the dead himself.
The king was fearsome and terrible to behold, an image of ancient glory and ancient horror. He was clad in armour of turquoise and gold and wrapped in funereal bindings and tattered ceremonial robes. A golden serpent-topped crown lay on his head, and he wielded a golden halberd that shone with inner light. An unnatural blue glow emanated from his empty eye sockets, and he seemed to glow with a golden hue, as if he was touched by the sun itself.
The king's chariot stopped beside his elite guards and in front of his troops, who all stood to attention. With a voice dry and harsh as the desert winds, he gave one imperious order:
'War.'
The undead warriors then started to organise themselves in preparation for battle.
Celestine tried to pry her eyes away from the sight and focus on the dead soldiers forming up in their legions and squadrons beneath tattered banners and around armoured sergeants and captains, but her mind's eye was irresistibly drawn to the deathly visage of the king. As she looked upon him with much hesitation, she saw exactly where the blue soul-flames he had in the place of eyes were focused.
He was looking right at her.
Celestine woke up in a cold sweat.
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And that's it for this story. What happens next? Will I continue it? Will I leave it to die here? I guess we'll just have to find out. Comments and criticisms are always welcome.