Pi 3,155

White. White hills, a white ground that blended into an off-white sky heavy with snow. The snow that had already fallen clung to his warriors, to their steeds and their equipment. Many of them no longer bore the skin that ordinary humans thought so indispensable, but those who still had it were pale from a lack of sunlight and the low temperatures. None of that matched the pristine paleness of the rider that led the Chaos band through Naggaroth's icy borderland. Her hair, her skin and her eyes were of a color nearly truculent in their whiteness.

Äiatar Vanakuri knew that there would be specks of color around the path her band had taken. Dead ponies, chargers returned to their natural state, warriors not strong enough to cope with the hardships of the campaign and the toil that was going through the deep snow.. Their remains would have put color into the vastness, splatter the funeral cloth the eternal winter had draped over the landscape. Other would have left them as they fell, would not care whether they would be devoured by carrion eaters or defiled by the damned Druchii who hid behind their new weapons. Those others would not care whether the Elves would see their coming as combat would be a blessing wherever it happened. Äitar was different. She had been given orders, explicit order, by Barak ar Varbadaudassoda himself. She was to flank the thrice damned Druchii, she was to remain hidden and to attack them from behind when the time was right. She would wait for blessed night and sacred storm, would attack when Barak's forces tried to break the lines. Then she would strike.

It was a good plan, a beautiful plan. Äiatar liked beautiful things and so she would do that. And if that meant that she would bury the weak and the laggards under pristine white snow so be it. Äiatar rode through the beautiful whiteness and a Legion of Chaos followed her wake.

Her mind was still parsing the flickering lights that had just appeared before her when something that felt like a glowing hammer hit her chest.

800 Meter away

Tevil Magestalker watched the fall of his company's shot through a telescope he had wrapped in white bandages. No German binocular for a mere company leader, but the picture in his right eye was clear enough.

The initial salvos had been a bit short, but now the lead met flesh and armor. That there were upwards of two thousand Chaos warriors and less than 120 effectives with him did not bother him too much, he had been there before. His Druchii kept up a steady fire of about ten rounds a minute on top of what the machine guns could do against an enemy who still needed to learn about taking cover. They were less than a kilometer away, but given the soft, deep snow between him and the enemy he knew that he would have at least five minutes of uninterrupted shooting, if not more. Till then his machine guns and the rifles would tear them a new one. If they got too close to comfort he could still retreat faster than they did and repeat the massacre later.

In the end it proved unnecessary. The Chaotics still had their leaders in front, so whatever chain of command they had before the loud part started was now gone. The proud warriors were now a mob going this way and that. Those who went back mostly survived, those who tried to assault the Druchii did not.

The combat felt so very wrong. Tevil had been a Druchii warrior for more than a hundred years and he had been good at the old way of doing things. Not only had he been good, he had enjoyed inflicting pain and misery, seeing the terror in the eyes of his enemies and subjugating those who surrendered was sublime. The only reason why he had followed Malus Darkblade' s orders to learn, besides sheer terror at the thought of being disobedient, was as this was the only way the Druchii might push back the waves of Chaos coming from the desert. The Germans in Malekith's employ had managed to make him much more effective as a soldier while taking the joy of combat away at the same time. Oh how he hated them.

It was nearly an hour later that he rose from his position. Standing up it he could see more of the retreating backs and he doubted he would see any of them again. If the unforgiving cold did not kill them their superiors well might.

He needed three tries to fix his skis right and nearly fell twice when he had set out to the RP. Every joint complaint, every muscle ached and he found himself yawning about every other minute. Tevil pulled an oilpaper wrapped pack from deep inside his fatigues during a stop and munched the bar made from nuts, fat and sugar. A couple of years ago he would never have touched such stuff, now that he burned thousands of calories just to stay alive they were a treasure. He did his best to hide his exhaustion, as did every of his soldiers. Showing weakness was a very bad idea for a Druchii.

He managed the trip back without mishap, unobtrusively checked if his platoon leaders had indeed posted guards and made a beeline for the sleds that occupied a small depression. A petroleum stove provided warmth and heated a big pot of stew. The warmth it restored to his body was welcome, the increased tiredness was not.

"Highness."
"Yes Ereor, what is it?"
"Ammunition Highness. We no longer have enough to restock everybody to their full load. The machine guns are down to half their allotment."
"Any sign of the supply sleds?"
"None highness and if they arrive tomorrow or the day thereafter it would be a sign of Khaine's favor."
"We made quite an offering to him today."
"Yes. Maybe he thinks we have it good enough with all these new rifles and skis and whatnot."
"Maybe. Ereor, wake up our sparky and have him contact HQ. Message as follows: Group Magestalker, position here, blablabla.
Have stopped another flanking maneuver by enemy. Killed upwards of 1000 enemy, rest in flight. Request urgent resupply, if not available will move to point Blood." Got it?"
"Yes highness."
"Get to it."

This had been the third flanking attempt by the Chaos army in two weeks. He needed more soldiers, more ammunition, more of everything to stop them.

A few kilometers from the Druchii company the snow was no longer pristine and white. It had many shades now, mostly reds and black. It made for a riot of colors in a destert of whiteness. It would not last long.

Karak-a-Karaz

Strike
Turn
Strike
Turn
Strike
Turn

Bruglemier's hands moved on their own accord as they should. He had used this very drill and this hammer since he had made them himself, 38 years ago to replace similar tools he had used for half a century.
Practically all Dawi had a similar set somewhere as they were the tools to use when one wanted to drill a hole into the rock that made up the Kara's wall in one way or another. It was hard, exhausting work, which was just and proper. He was drilling good rock, the very home of the Dawi and it should be respected. Never would he lower himself to the point where he used one of these hammer drills and even if he would be willing to do so the next power socket was far away.

He managed the two inches hole in a bit longer than five minutes, which was a good time. It seemed such a small hole for the job at hand, but that was what he had been asked to do. A mere decade ago he would have chiseled a larger hole, taking his time. He would have then taken a bit of oak and carved that into a shape that fit the hole when encouraged with a hammer. Then he would have applied a hand drill for a pilot hole before fixing whatever was needed with a screw and a screwdriver. If he did a good job, as he had done for the last hundred years or so, the fixing would have held at least 200 kilogram, maybe more and would have lasted till the solid oak molded away. All together it would have taken him an hour or so. The manlings would have cheated and put in that plug with plaster or cement. It would have been easier and faster but would hold only a fraction of what Bruglemier`s work could have done.

Now he picked up another of these never-to-be-sufficiently damned German contraptions that were oh-so-useful and hammered the 8 mm Fischer plug home. He had not believed it when he had been told and he had barely believed it during the demonstration, but this plug would fix 800 kilograms at the very least. It was the last in a long line of plugs he had hammered into the tunnels wall during his shift. Grumbling under his beard he took up the chisel again and managed two additional holes before the foreman's whistle called for the shift to end.
He had made 90 holes today, which was ok these days and would have taken a week or more in the old days. Tomorrow the young whippersnappers would come and fix the cable duct that were a sign of the new times. He hated them with a vengeance.

His clan had been rich a decade before. Well, not rich, but well-off enough. They had mined and traded the Brightstones that lit up the dwellings of the rich Dawi. A magical, warm, colorful light that did not use any air, that lit when needed and would be hidden by blinds when darkness was preferred. They were rare, were worth several times their worth in gold and a home lit by them was a symbol of status. The Grimbols were well known for providing the best of them and their trade coveted.
Till the Germans came. Till they showed their electricity and their light bulbs and their LED lights. They were so much cheaper, so much brighter and so much available in numbers. The Grimbols were no longer rich, no longer well-off and their trade was a curiosity. And many of its members, Bruglemier included, had to work for others, no longer their own masters.

He grumbled when he made his way down the tunnels and very nearly decided against taking this newly-fangled contraption. His weary legs convinced him otherwise and he grumbled together with a dozen other Dawi who waited inside the niche hewn from the rock for this very purpose. It took a couple of minutes, but then a low-slung train-like contraption made its way down the tunnel and stopped before the tired workers. Burgelmier placed a couple of coins in the driver's hands before taking his place in the second car. The wooden bench was not particularly comfortable but beat walking by a mile. He was nearly asleep as the train was pretty quiet apart from some squeaks and the low hum of electric motors driven by German gigacaps.

When the train left the tunnels the change of light woke him up enough to notice his surroundings again. His mood became worse again when he saw the multitude of new lights that now "graced" Karak-a-Karaz commercial district. It had always been well-lit, but now it was a gaudy cascade of colors where one merchant tried to outdo the next one. In the blessed past the lack of Brightstones and the regulations that limited oxygen-burning lights had curbed such gauche displays. The German lights and the new hydro-power plant allowed for such silliness. And it wasn't just Dawi stores that did it. The Germans had asked for the opportunity to open some of their venues in the Dawi capital and to Burgelmier's disgust Thorgrimm Grudgebearer had accepted their bid. So besides merchants who had occupied their venues since hundreds of years Lidl, Kaufland and McDonalds offered their wares.

Even this ride found an end and the weary dwarf made his way through the labyrinth of small tunnels that led to the his family's dwelling. They were not the Grimbols' halls, they were merely a series of rooms for him, his wife and the kids.

As soon as he opened the door he smelled the last disaster of the day. All Dawi knew about the grave dangers of any uncontrolled fire. It could kill them directly, it could burn the very air they needed, collapse supports or, if things went really wrong, detonate methane gasses. Dawi were always on guard for the smallest fires as to douse them before they became a calamity.
And now he smelled something. He needed time to identify it, it was nothing common. When he finally parsed the information presented by his nose it was just his weariness that prevented him to fly into rage. He smelled burned dust and a minute amount of burned oil. At the same time he realized that the even the hallway was warmer than it should have been.

The Dawi halls, with very few exceptions, were at a damp 12 degrees year in and year out. It was the temperature of the rock around them and only a few places were warmer. The forges always were by their very purpose and the King's halls held roaring fires as a mark of welcome and prestige. Apart from that the dwarfs had to limit their heating markedly as not to be killed by their fires. The Karaks were cleverly constructed to provide ventilation by convection and air pumps. That amount was always limited and so heating was a luxury.
And now Burgelmier's rooms were warmer than they had any right to be. It was not that noticeable in the hallway, but the difference was marked when he opened the door to the living room. It was lit by two formerly precious Brightstones and the orange glow of an electric radiator. The air was so much warmer and drier than usual that he stood transfixed while trying to find words for this idiocy.

"Before you say any word Burglemier, this is a gift by my dear mother. It is a blessed thing and little Brond is coughing far less since we have switched it on. A bit of dry air does him good."
"It softens him, that's what it does."
"It keeps him from dying, that's what it will do."

Some days it did not pay to get up. The following spat could have been worse, Burglemier and his wife were on speaking terms after just two weeks. It took Burglemier another year before he handled a hammer drill. It might not respect the rock as much as his chisel, but made the same holes in less than 5 seconds. He would not have earned enough money any other way and he needed every Mark he could earn. All kids had indeed survived.

Tetihuacan, Mexico

Millions of years before a huge deposit of salt had accumulated a hundred meters under the Temple of the Feathered Serpent. It had remained there for many years before a changed water table reached it. The deposit was vast and so it took the water millenia to wash away enough salt to fill every table on Earth for many years. When it was finally gone the deposit had left a dome-shaped cave of titanic proportions connected to a series of tunnels carved by the very waters that had removed the salt. They went around for miles and were mostly filled by a mixture of salt water and silt for another eternity.
That had been a very long time ago. Someone or something had entered these tunnels, someone had formed exits for all that water, someone had removed the silt, had connected tunnels in some places and sealed them in others. These someones had worked on the tunnels had enlarged them in placed and smoothed them in others.

All of this had been explained to Capitane Mathis Lambert in great detail. Drones and echolocation had given him a rough map of the tunnels below. What they had not given him was any idea what waited for him below, it had not provided any more insight into the why and wherefores of the Nagas and it had not prepared him for the beauty. He slid down a fastrope from a hole in the ceiling 20 meters above him and tried to keep his sector under observation just to be distracted by baubles and history.

The dome's walls were covered with crystals of some sort which reflected the light provided by the flares in all sorts of rainbow colors. Things had been carved from the rock at the bottom on the cavern, things that looked like the interior of a Greek temple done on acid. There had been things of beauty down there which had been explosively rearranged by the grenades and others smashed in their places. Between these beings elegantly slid between the many obstacles and raised well-made bows.

He had his submachine gun up and fired the first burst when the arrows zipped past him. Sliding down a flexible rope did not help his aim and so his shots missed by a meter as well. He had no choice but to continue and he learned that his enemy would not be deterred either. The arrows came closer and one scratched along his vest, taking a few centimeters of webbing with it. More arrows zipped by and the others abseiling below or besides him had the same problem. There was at least one meaty sound that was followed by too much silence.

And then there was the crash and things changed drastically. Mathis doubted that the Dwarf had suffered an accident descending the rope, he was trained too well for that. Instead he had dropped the last meters life a stone, probably trusting his power armor to break the fall. The French Captain had seen Gotrek fighting a couple of times but had usually been too busy himself to take much note. Now he had a first-row seat on a massacre. The ax had parted the rope that had hindered the former Slayer and an assisted jump brought the Dawi amongst the Naga shooting his men. Nothing bedecked in so much armor should be that fast, but there he was amongst the enemy. There were no more potshots at him or anybody else, there was the Slayer and the massacre. The Naga had daggers or tried to use their bows to fend off an ax that had served a god as weapon and home. They might have used felt pens for all the luck they had. When Mathis released the fastrope there was no longer any enemy in the dome. The hiss that emerged from the many tunnels that led into the dome said this would not last.

Cave close to U40, Underground Sea

Something about the cavern bothered Friedel Bauer, yet he could not place the cause of it. He walked towards the group of submariners and scientists who beckoned him over while glancing here and there trying to pinpoint the source of his unease.

"So you see it too Captain?"
"See what?"
"That this cavern is exactly as the one we found the IXth in?"
"Now that you mention it. Could have seen it earlier."
"Don't fret Captain. We had the measurements to go by. But this is not what we wanted to show you."
"What is it then?"
"Well all around us, and actually where you are standing are a great lot of Naga skeletons. These we saw before, but this we did not."

Wilhelm Schumann knew that his colleagues would be scandalized when he just picked up the sword from the ground. He had not documented the way it lay to the millimeter, had not written lengthy reports and the gloves he wore were for his protecting, not the finds. His colleagues were not here and they did not have to go within 48 hours.

"We wanted to show you this."

The sword the archeologist held up was roughly two thirds of a meter, had a slight curve and a single edge. The handle might have been wrapped in something, but what it had been was lost due to rot. The blade itself was remarkably free of rust, having spent the time in a scabbard.

"Is this a Katana?"
"Yes it is as far as we can tell."
"So some ancient Samurai were transported to this hell as well?"
"That is a very different question and we do not think so."
"Why not?"
"What do you you see on this blade, or more precisely, what do you not see?"
"I am no expert on old swords doctor, please help me."

"Here should be a wavering line, called Hamon. It denotes where the smith applied loam before heat treatment, so that the hardened blade would be backed up by more flexible steel. It also gives the sword the curved shape when it is quenched."
"Fascinating. So?"
"So this is a modern replica, a cheap one in many regards. It has the right shape but the materials are off. This is probably one of the swords given to Japanese officers during World War 2. If I am right, then those remains over there are Ariska rifles and this poor fragger here tried to defend himself with a Nambu."

"So a group of Japanese soldiers from World War 2 were transported here and battled these Naga."
"Who are very likely not native to this area. So somebody brought these two together, some 90 years ago."
"Who would do such a thing and why?"
"Maybe it is a test of abilities. Maybe it is entertainment. Maybe it is something so alien that we have no chance understanding it."
"Uff. Doctor, 90 years is not that long ago. Thing whoever did this is still around?"
"A very good question captain."