From the land of Tzeentch and the Inevitable City, Taylor's never ending journey continued on. From the stables of Bandon the False Everchosen, Taylor and her retinue liberated their own herd of Chaos Steeds, the most massive, hulking, monstrous horses Taylor had ever seen. Not that Taylor had ever seen horses in her previous life, she was never really a horse girl, but she was sure that actual horses weren't 8 feet tall, charcoal black stallions with sharpened fangs that fed on human flesh. Barded in jagged black plate armor, replete with many spikes and horns for charging, goring, and all sorts of violence, each horse was as deadly in combat as any Chaos Knight.

And not only were these beasts vicious demons, but they seemed to have a great deal of intelligence, for when Taylor entered the stables, all the horses bowed to her, and allowed her to mount without resistance. They could see that Talor was now beyond any mere Chaos Warrior, but was an exalted Chosen and champion of the Gods.

It was on the backs of these great beasts that Taylor continued on forward. Ever forward. The ice and snow of Tzeentch's domain melted before the fiery heat of their hooves. Behind Taylor rode the pirate Cereza, her second in command. The first mate now wore a set of blood red Chaos plate armor, similar fitted for a woman's form like Taylor's armor was, that had been looted from the Inevitable City. The Advisor mentioned it was the armor of a sword maiden of Valkia the Bloody, a daemon princess of Khorne, which Taylor found fitting for her second in command.

Cereza bounced somewhat awkwardly in the saddle, and shifted uncomfortably in the armor. While she was born a princess and taught the way of the sword, she had not been a royal for many, many years, and had never had to don battle armor before. But the horrors of Chaos they would face in the coming months if not years were enough that Cereza was overdue for an upgrade. Of course it's not as though Taylor rode any better. She'd barely ridden a bike before, let alone another living creature. But they would have time to accustom themselves, after all, time was irrelevant in the Great Ocean.

Whereas Cerveza and Taylor rode with the grace of peasant boys, the Advisor beside them rode his warbeast with no great concern. His old, frail body sat in the saddle as if he were born to it, controlling the horse with his knees as he simultaneously read from his ancient tome, guiding them forward through the ever changing landscape of Chaos.

And behind the trio rode the 16 Swords of Chaos. The heavily armored knights trailed the steps of their master stoic and silent, never disobeying an order or leaving her undefended. Their silence had even grown to grate on Taylor, who couldn't even get a name out of them. The only thing that kept her from giving them the names Huey, Dewey, Louie, and other such ridiculous names was the fact that she found words scrawled onto their helms.

Ein, Zwei, Drei, Riekspiel words for one, two, and three, all the way to the number sixteen. An efficient, if not rather uninspired naming system gifted to them by a previous Everchosen, and one Taylor decided to continue.

Despite their mute demeanor and complete lack of personality, Taylor was grateful for their presence. When they weren't traveling or fighting against ravening hordes of beastmen and daemons, they continued Taylor's training till her skills were worthy of the title as a Chaos Knight. And when they rested, the Swords would act like stone gargoyles, unblinking sentinels that protected them while Taylor and Cereza could sleep.

And with the Swords of Chaos as her ironic shield, the saga of Taylor's ascent to champion of the Dark Gods, truly began. Over the next many years, Taylor's blood crusade brought her into conflict with many great heroes and warlords of the Warp. All of whom either bent the knee to her greatness, or had their backs broken by her power.

The first of these warlords was a champion of Khorne named Moraband. Riding atop a massive, red and brass mechanical rhino named a Juggernaut, Moraband was a warrior of Norscan descent. He led a warband of Khornate marauders and Chaos Warriors across large swaths of the Chaos Wastes, collecting many skulls for the Blood God.

While his warband was somewhat small, around only a hundred blood-thirsty viking raiders, each one was a mountain of muscle and fury that would make any army of the Old World quiver. Unfortunately for them however, while each of them was a trained killer, each of Taylor's Swords of Chaos was an angel of death.

When Taylor and her retinue approached their camp, Moraband's followers fell like wheat to a thresher. Rank upon rank of Norscan warrior was slaughtered by the unkillable wall of steel that were the Swords of Chaos. Soon, the raider's ranks broke, each of them running from the terror that was Taylor, until only Moraband himself had a spine to stand against her, and challenged her to a duel for command of the warhost. She could respect him for that. Taylor still ripped said spine out of him, but she could respect it nonetheless.

Some rejected Taylor's claim of rule over their warband. Taylor culled all who dissented. Eventually, a Norscan Marauder Champion named Khagen, covered in a werewolf's fur and armed with a savage, glittering greataxe, rallied the survivors and bent the knee to Taylor. With a hardened force behind her, Taylor led her Norscan warriors further through the Wastes, continuing towards the next Treasure of Chaos set out for her by the Advisor.

On the next leg of their adventure, when Taylor's warband was resting, the sky was filled black with arrows and javelins as a roaming band of Slaanesh-aligned Hung ambushed her party. If the Norscans were the dark fantasy equivalent of Norse Vikings, then the Hung were the analog of Mongol horse archers. Wearing boiled, troll leather or mammoth fur armor and riding savage, sharp toothed horses, they rode fast and hard into the Norscan camp, killing many sleeping warriors.

The Hung expected a simple raid. A clean slaughter of a similarly sized band that would then be assimilated into their own. What they didn't expect were the mounted Chaos Knights, who required neither sleep nor rest, to counter charge and break their formations in an instant.

The Hung horsemasters were fast, able to keep out of pace from Taylor's knights. A wall fire ceased their retreat, allowing Taylor to reap a bloody toll of retribution. Taylor hacked her way through probably a good half of the horsemen, before the leader, a squat man carrying a jeweled scimitar and several javelins rode up to stop her.

Taylor would have killed him in an instant, but ended up not having to. Before the duel could begin, the leader of the Hung had his throat slit by his second in command, a ruggedly handsome rider with long flowing black hair tied into a wild ponytail. The Hung warrior, named Drago, bowed before Taylor in supplication, declaring loyalty to her as she was far more perfect a being than his previous liege, a breathtaking beauty as she tore apart his fellow clasmen.

Khagen of the Norscans said they shouldn't trust the words of a treacherous snake, and that she should just cut all the Hungs' throats. Taylor considered this, but also understood that treachery was a common trait in this wasteland, and even if Drago attempted to betray her, he didn't have the power to achieve anything.

Instead, Taylor took the Hung under her banner as well, swelling her horde to a number that could fight against any great warhost.

The next victims to Taylor's tyranny were as varied as they were grotesque. More beastmen herds, a pack of Khornate Bloodletters, chittering plagues of Skaven, and even a lost tribe of plague ridden ogres led by a nigh-unkillable infected ogre warlord named Noxilus, who Taylor forced to kneel as she burned away his infection from within. Many refused to bow once they were broken, and many died. Those that bent the knee learned their place quickly within Taylor's ranks.

One champion that Taylor found particularly interesting was a Bretonnian woman, a former Grail Damsel and master of shadow magic. Her name was Isolde, a beautiful, regal woman dressed in a flowing purple gown. She had come to the camp while they rested within a cursed, dead forest surrounded by a never ending mist. The woman had twelve fallen Knights of Bretonnia, now Chaos Knights, bound her as protectors. The beastmen on sentry were immediately beguiled by Isolde's magic, and she simply walked to Taylor's tent.

While Taylor found the prospect of fighting them interesting, instead Isolde bowed and said that her god, the Changer, charged her with seeking Taylor. Warily, Taylor accepted her in.

Much to Taylor's chagrin, she found that the followers of Chaos she was assembling were, true to their namesake, chaotic. Might made right in the camp, and the followers of rival gods hated each other as much or even more than any non-believer. More than once she found Khornate Norscans and Slaaneshi Hung trying to kill one another in brawls and blood duels, or ogres tearing apart gors for stealing their food.

It was only Taylor's iron fist that kept them in line. After she flayed one Norscan with her sword, and boiled the fat off an ogre while he was alive with her magic, the rest learned not to act out. At least, not where Taylor could see.

It was this pattern of conquest, annihilation, and slaughter that continued on for as long as Taylor remembered. Many more champions fell to her. Wai Han, a death-dealing mutant dedicated to building a tower of skulls that reached the heavens was ripped apart and his tower toppled. Lord Baldemort and his rusted Plague-knights fell apart at the touch of Taylor's sword, while the hypnotist musician Castisus was drawn and quartered by the spinal-cord strings of his bone harp.

For so long this continued, that when Taylor's army had made camp today, her horde numbered in the thousands. Taylor's warcamp was parked on the border of a land called Haemorrhagia, a wasteland plagued by firestorms, unpredictable earthquakes, and vomitous rivers of daemon-spawning black boiling liquid.

Taylor's own tent, a crudely stitched together yurt made of mammoth hide and horse hair, stood in the center of the camp, surrounded on all sides by her Swords of Chaos. Despite everything, treachery and betrayal were a constant in her camp, Taylor had to constantly fend off attempts on her life by ambitious but overly stupid followers of Chaos. Besides her Swords, only Cereza and the Advisor were allowed into Taylor's tent, where she could have some facsimile of peace and security.

Standing at the head of her 'bed,' more of a pile of the least stinky furs and leathers from the camp, Taylor looked at one of her most prized possessions, a mirror. It was actually a shield, polished to such a sheen that it provided a perfect reflection that Taylor ripped from the arm of a Slaaneshi Chaos Lord. The mirror shield was placed upon a chest of bone, where Taylor kept her own small hoard of treasure, various magical trinkets, weapons, and tomes which Taylor had gathered over her years of conquest.

Removing her helmet, Taylor gazed at herself in the mirror. She was older now, so much so that the first time looked at herself in the mirror, she saw more of her mother's face than her own, her body easily within the thirties now. How her physicality corresponded to her actual age, Taylor had no idea, as she felt as if she had journeyed for centuries already, growing her horde to the army that now stood at her back.

Taylor grabbed a pinch of her curly hair. It had grown long enough to reach her mid back now, and Taylor knew she should probably cut it. It was a pain to fit all within her helmet, and it was simply a bad idea to give her enemies something they could hold onto during a fight.

"You know, I don't understand why our followers call me the vain one, when you spend so much time looking at yourself in the mirror?" Cereza's voice said behind her.

Smiling, Taylor glanced behind her. "Tell me who is insulting you and I shall have them fed to the ogres."

Cereza laughed quietly as she walked up to Taylor. "That's sweet." She wrapped her hands around Taylor's waist and gave her a light kiss on the neck. "You always know how to treat me."

Taylor placed her hands over Cereza's. "If you asked me to, I would kill them all."

"Tempting," Cereza tutted. "But the idea of restarting this little horde of ours after so much work sounds like far too much of a pain."

Taylor lightly chuckled, bringing the two of them to sit down onto her bed. "That wouldn't be the worst though. Just the two of us. I wouldn't exactly say it was better back then but…"

Cereza sat down next to her, wrapping her arm around Taylor's waist. "But it was simpler. No need to constantly be bashing barbarian heads to keep order."

"No need to cut apart those who slow us down for the sin of being weak," Taylor sighed, recalling the vague face of the Bretonnian man-at-arms she betrayed long ago. "I can remember a time when I would've been horrified by what I do now. A time when I didn't have to act like such a monster. When I could just be Taylor, and not the Everchosen." She shuddered, barely noticeable, but that alone was a monumental crack in the warlord facade she crafted herself.

It would've been unspeakable to say these words to anyone else. Any one of the dozens of generals beneath her banner would challenge her if they even smelled a hint of weakness. But with Cereza, Taylor could be weak. She could let the mask drop, even just a little.

The arm wrapped around Taylor grew tighter. "And the chance to return to that time is approaching, my love. Soon, we shall have the artefacts, and we shall be out of this blighted place."

With a simple humm, Taylor turned within Cereza's grasp and moved to kiss her lover. The pirate placed a finger on Taylor's lips to stop her. Taylor blinked in surprise at her.

"The Old Man asked me to call you," Cereza answered the unasked question.

"He always knows how to ruin a moment." With a roll of her eyes, Taylor groaned and broke out of Cereza's grasp, standing. "The Advisor is sorely mistaken if he thinks he can summon me like a damned flesh hound."

"That's why he's not summoning you. He asked me to call you. And it's only because this is important," Cereza said with hands raised placatingly. "The scouts have returned with news."

Taylor froze, letting any anger that was building within her fade away, replaced with an almost giddy anticipation. She quickly clenched her fist, reining in the excitement as well. Even in front of Cereza, she couldn't display such naked emotion. "They found the trail?"

Cereza shrugged. "I don't know. The old coot was cagey, as always. Wanted to tell you."

With a grunt, Taylor grabbed her helmet and replaced it upon her head. "Best not to keep him waiting then," she spoke, her voice dark and booming.

Taylor and the pirate princess found the Advisor by the edge of the camp, near the makeshift defensive walls of bone-tipped spears, bound and tied together as they jutted out towards the wasteland. They were a stop-gap defense, something could slow down a cavalry or monster charge, but not blunt it completely. But they would provide time for any sentries to call for help and get the camp into a war footing.

The Advisor stood alongside the Hung warlord Drago and two of his Horsemasters. When the Northmen saw Taylor approach, they all fell to their knees, while the Advisor gave a bow of his head.

Taylor narrowed her eye at the Advisor, before she shifted her gaze to the Hung. "What have you found?"

Head still bowed, Drago spoke with his heavily accented, broken English. "Yes, mistress. For your beauty and glory, we bring you this." Reaching behind himself, Drago pulled out a tattered leather banner. Upon the hide was a symbol, a crude rendition of a blood red bull skull. The sigil of Taurox the Brass Bull.

A wicked smile split Taylor's face beneath her helmet. "So, we have him."

"Indeed," The Advisor said slowly. "After months of searching we have the Brass Bull, and with him, Dorghar, the Steed of the Apocalypse, and your next Treasure of Chaos."

"Where did you find this?" Taylor asked, holding the banner out to Drago.

"Three days ride into the fiery lands, my Lady," Drago said. "That banner itself was taken from a border outpost. We could not get close to the Brass Bull's fortress itself, but we saw it in the distance."

Taylor nodded. "I see. What do you make of the defenses? Can our horde take it?"

Drago grimaced, considering his words carefully. "I must say, my Lady, the castle is impregnable. Massive, spiked iron walls surround it, and we have no proper weapons for a siege." The Northman bowed his head low, not wanting to be the bearer of ill tidings to the Everchosen.

Luckily for him, Taylor only gave a low growl in response. The man did what she asked him, and there was no reason to punish a general for reporting what was. That was how one sowed discontent in their own ranks. And while she was a champion of Chaos, she was no Khornate berserker with no control over her rage. There was time to call upon Khorne in battle, and there were times to call upon Tzeentch. This was time for the latter.

"Were there any ways you could see to enter? A sallyport, or sewer exit?"

Taking a moment to think, Drago shook his head. "No, my Lady. The only entrance I saw was the main gate, from which only Beastmen and their prison carts enter."

Taylor nodded, "Beastmen taking and holding a castle. Strange."

"If it were Tzaargors, I could understand," Cereza commented. "But the Brass Bull follows Khorne. I'm surprised his rage could cool long enough for him to even consider making such a move."

"In the end, I suppose the why doesn't matter," Taylor muttered. "Dorghar is there, and we must get in. If there are these prisoner caravans which enter, would we be able to disguise our own beastmen to sneak a force in?"

Taylor's generals glanced at one another, unsure of what the answer would be, but as always, it was the Advisor who responded first. "I would advise against that, my Lady. Beastmen senses are far more acute than our own. If we tried to send our own gors in, they would be sniffed out in an instant."

With another grunt, Taylor brought her hand to chin in thought. "What about magic? I may not yet know much of Ulgu, the wind of shadow yet, but Isolde is a master of it. Could she get us in?"

When questioned, the former Grail Damsel informed Taylor that she could hide Taylor's appearance and smell, but she could only hide one, or perhaps two people for a period long enough for Taylor to sneak in and escape with her prize. With that knowledge, Taylor enacted her plan.

Led by Drago, Taylor and Isolde rode to the trail that led to Taurox's citadel. This being more of a stealth mission, Taylor left behind her great tower shield in camp, and instead only kept her sword at her belt, Lukas' former wolf blade.

Hiding near a blood spewing geyer, the trio waited until a wagon made bone and was pulled by a powerful Gorebeast, a terrible, mutant monster that looked like a cross between a gorilla, a bull, and a crocodile. The wagon itself was roughly the length of a school bus, with the ribs of a huge animal acting as a cage and topped with furs and leathers atop it. At the head of a wagon, a powerful, armored gor whipped the gorebeast forward, as smaller gors and ungors hung off ribs jeering at those within.

Nodding at Isolde, the sorceress nodded in return and placed a hand on Taylor. Almost immediately wrapped Taylor in a cloak of shadows, making her functionally invisible. Weaving a second flow of shadow magic, Isolde contained the smell of Taylor within the a bubble around her, making it impossible for her to be sniffed out unless a beastman was right next to her.

But Isolde could only hold the combination of spells for so long, and Taylor sprinted for the caravan from their hiding spot. With her magical enhancements, Taylor caught up to the wagon in seconds. Approaching from the back of the vehicle, Taylor leaped just as the wagon hit a bump in the road that made the whole thing bounce. Taylor latched onto the bone door at the rear just as the caravan hit the ground, the guards and driver none the wiser of their newest passenger.

Keeping silent, Taylor peered into the inside of the bone caravan. It was filled with a multitude of mortals, dirty, half naked, and packed in tight to where they couldn't sit. It was mostly humans that made up the haul, but Taylor spotted a few halflings and even dwarves among their number. Idly, Taylor wondered where all these mortals came from. Obviously more survivors from the Old World, but how did they last the centuries she had here when they were obviously so weak? She shook her head. It didn't matter. They were off to become cattle and stock for the beastmen anyway. She couldn't help them, and she had no desire to.

Putting them out of her mind, Taylor rode the bone wagon into the Taurox's fortress. When the wagon approached the castle, Taylor saw the thick, black iron walls Drago spoke of. The whole structure looked like a kind of octagon, with powerful walls forming the perimeter. They were two to three feet thick and all across the face of it were jagged, juttering spikes that made it impossible to get ladders on. The walls themselves were probably thirty feet high, and atop their ramparts, ungor archers patrolled.

The gatehouse they approached had two massive towers, and the gate itself was casted in the shape of a great dragon's maw. As the wagon approached, the driver blew into a bone horn, which was reciprocated by a return call at the gate. The sounds of drums and whips filled the air, and Taylor could feel the ponderous steps of huge creatures, probably minotaurs or giants, moving a wheel and opening the gate. To Taylor's surprise, the gate opened smoothly, the pulleys and chains well lubricated with oil and blood, and the wagon was driven inside.

The inside of the citadel was everything that Taylor expected from beastmen. Within the castle walls, anything that wasn't made of the nigh-indestructible black iron found in the realm of Chaos was razed to the ground, creating an almost open field of rubble that stretched the entire interior. Taylor could see the ruins of various cobblestone buildings, towers, suggesting this place was once an urban area, all reduced to skeletal husks and half walls. There were other structures Taylor could vaguely make out. Destroyed industrial buildings like forges, or even what looked like a collapsed oil well.

The Beastmen were what she remembered. Loud, stinking savages braying and butting against one another in primal shows of dominance. Larger beastmen would trample, crush, or simply eat their smaller kin over control of any ruined building, any nook or cranny. Smaller packs or herds huddled together in their own corner, marking out their own boundaries with the skulls of rival tribes. It was the territorial savagery of the animal kingdom focused and condensed.

It was a curious thing, but Taylor did not care for the sociology of the beastmen in the slightest. Turning her head away from them, she focused on her goal, as the cart moved to the only structure that remained standing within this hellish place, a brass tower that overlooked all. It was easily the largest structure in miles, and Taylor was able to see the top of it from outside the castle. Like the black iron walls, the tower was replete with spikes and enthusiastically decorated with skulls, and drainage windows that seemed to ceaselessly spew blood. On top of the tower, Taylor could see the icon of Khorne, an X-shaped rune with a bar that ran across at the bottom.

Taylor did not think this was THE Brass Citadel, the home and keep of Khorne himself. There were far too few skulls for that. But this was… a mirror? An effigy? At minimum it was a monument to the Blood God, and probably the reason why Taurox didn't attempt to raze it to the ground. Insulting one's patron god like that never worked out well. And the Chaos Gods were a particularly vindictive lot.

The tower had only one entrance, a serrated portcullis gate, and Taylor couldn't help but be reminded of the tower of Tzeencth in the Inevitable City. She wondered what it was about giant towers that drew so many Chaos Warlords and Daemons to build them. Probably compensating for something. She shunted the idle thought from her mind as the rattling of chains and grinding of metal on metal filled the air as the wagon entered the brass tower. They were in some kind of castle foyer, where pitch black stone formed heavy set columns that supported the floors above. On the far end of the room, she could see a staircase that led to the upper floors. The place was dimly lit, but what stood out to Taylor the most was the stench. Unlike the open air the ruins outside, the stench of so many beastmen living in close proximity was foul.

Taylor dismounted as it came to a stop, and the beastmen opened up the cage to divide the spoils within. The prisoners screamed and cried as the beastmen split them apart, some for feeding and others for breeding. The sounds of the victims raised the hackles of the nearby beastmen, drawing their attention. A convenient distraction as Taylor slipped by.

While Taylor didn't know the layout of this castle at all, she let her powers guide her. Focusing on her warpstone left eye, she could sense a powerful weave of magical winds coming from below her. And since followers of Khorne didn't use sorcerers, she knew it had to be Dorghar.

Making her way towards a heavy set iron door on the far side of the room, Taylor found a staircase that went down, not up. Following the winding path down, she found herself in an opening to a cave system, a wide open cavern of jagged stone that was far too large to be natural. The cave stretched out for miles underground, and Taylor realized she was looking at the desecrated tomb of a once great city.

Many of the cave walls themselves were carved into the shape of austere pillars and daemonic statues. Meanwhile the cave floor itself looked like it once hosted a bustling city layout, all now razed into various piles of rubble, with what looked like only a few iron buildings dotted throughout still standing. On the far end of the cavern, she could see the red glow of magma, as well as tunnels in the walls that moved further into the Underdark. This place must have been a city made by the Chaos Dwarfs, and the castle above ground was merely the surface entrance.

In the center of this system, Taylor's senses were pulled to the largest building there, a tall oval-shaped structure made of jagged iron spikes, obviously a stadium or colosseum, and one that definitely wasn't Chaos Dwarf made. Where everything made by the mad dwarves were expertly crafted and also remarkably advanced, this structure was more like a pile of spears, spikes, and scrap shaped into the facsimile of a building. The closest thing to architecture the Beastmen mind could conjure. That's where her target was.

Sneaking her way forward, Taylor realized that many of what she thought were iron structures in the distance, were actually iron cages. They littered the stone ground here, and were filled with all manner of monsters. There were the obvious, mutated animals, the putrid hog-like tuskgors and the viscous red-skinned warhounds, but also far more mutated beasts that Taylor had only heard of.

In one cage, she saw the chimeric form of a manticore, the half lion, half bat, half scorpion beasts that so often terrorized the skies of the Old World. When Taylor's invisible form walked by its cage, Taylor saw the manticore's head look up and right at her, its malevolent gaze showing a cruel intelligence as it stared directly at Taylor. Taylor stared back, unintimidated by the beast, no matter how smart it might have been, ready to silence it in an instant if it broke her infiltration. Luckily for it, the beast snorted and lowered its head onto its paws, seemingly bored.

Other cages did not pose the same level of exposure, but held many similar beasts of awe-inspiring might. In one cage Taylor saw a pair of Chaos Spawns not unlike the ones she fought off in the Plane of Gibbering Horrors. In another, there was a multi-headed hydra, the many snake heads pounding at its bonding to grab and consume any nearby beastmen. Taylor even saw a wooly mammoth, its mutated form sprouting extra tusks and hateful, cruel red eyes that hungered for death.

But Taylor ignored all of these creatures as she approached her target. Next to the beastmen's colosseum was the cage which contained Dorghar, the steed of the Apocalypse and her third Treasure of Chaos. The beast of a massive, black stallion, far larger than any horse Taylor had ever seen. It had ebony black fur and glistening muscled flanks, with vicious spikes protruding from its spine and neck. When it snorted, Taylor could see flame spurt from its nostrils, while every step the beast took left smouldering embers. Its eyes were a hellish red that, like the manticore, gazed right at Taylor as she approached.

Taylor could feel the enmity coming from the great beast, the hate that radiated from its very core. It dared her to challenge it, to share the same fate that many who tried to break Dorghar had suffered before. Taylor would enjoy proving it wrong.

Drawing the former wolf sword from her belt, Taylor swung the blade and shattered the lock sealing Dorghar's cage. The instant Taylor attacked, the invisibility surrounding her vanished, and her scent once more became known to the world. Chaos beasts and mutants all around her snapped their heads towards Taylor, hissing and snarling at the bars, desiring the fresh meat. Meanwhile, the moment the doors to its cage open, Dorghar moved.

Taylor's Chaos enhanced senses were barely able to keep up with the speed at which Dorghar dashed out of its cage. Taylor had no idea how fast the daemon horse moved, easily the same speed as a sports car pushed to its limits, and only getting faster. Dorghar left a trail of flame from its hoof prints as the hair on its neck blazed as well. Taylor had to act now otherwise the horse would be gone forever.

Sheathing her sword and focusing her fire magic into her feet, Taylor catapulted herself forward with her Fire Walk. Rocketing towards the beast, Taylor was barely able to land upon Dorghar's back and mount it. The moment she did, Taylor regretted it.

Taylor found herself burning under the intense heat of Dorghar's flames. She screamed as she wrapped her arms around the daemon horse's neck, lest she fall off. The pain was agonizing. Far worse than any would be pyromancer or fire breathing daemon she had fought before. Taylor had thought her own skill with Aqshy, the Lore of Fire, had made her immune to such things, but Dorghar was on a completely different level. This was no mere magical fire. These flames burned her very soul.

Beneath the Armour of Morkar, Taylor felt her skin and fat boil and burn away under the intense heat as it melted and fused to the armor itself. But she ignored it. She and pain were now kin, and it would not stop her.

"Stop!" Taylor shouted trying to wrangle the horse to follow her commands.

But Dorghar was wild, and seemingly intent on bucking her off now that it had its freedom in its sights. Dorghar slammed Taylor into iron cages, denting them and breaking some apart, releasing the beasts within. Vaguely, Taylor could hear the sounds of horns in the distance. The Beastmen were now aware of her presence and were assembling. Taylor grit her teeth, she could worry about that later.

Drawing her sword once more, Taylor smacked the side of Dorghar's flank with the flat of her blade, similar to how a rider would use their crop. "Yield!" She shouted, smacking once again.

But this only seemed to incense the beast further and to her surprise she felt Dorghar grow in size. Burning flames became jagged metal as Dorghar shifted form, transforming into the shape of the Khornate Juggernaut, a monstrous mechanical rhino like beast with a serrated blade for a horn.

The massive thing ran through more cages, sending them flying away as their locks broke open and the prisoners unleashed. Dorghar's Juggernaut form was slower than the Chaos Steed, but every impact hurt far worse as thousands of pounds of metal smashed into Taylor. Dozens of vicious, bloodthirsty monsters crawled out of their cages and into the ruined city, howling, braying, and snarling as they pounced upon beastmen guards. Those beasts of more intelligence, rather than simple instinct, took the opportunity that presented itself to sew more Chaos.

The manticore she saw previously leapt out of its cage, lancing a bestigor with its stinger as it freed open a cage of razagor boars. Said boars ran wild, trampling over any beastmen or cage in their way, inadvertently freeing the tentacled Chaos spawn, which snatched a razagor and three beastmen as they passed by. Dorghar itself, and to Taylor's suspicion purposefully, slammed the two of them into the cage of the mutated wooly mammoth. The furred elephant let out a triumphant cry with its snout, before charging and goring dozens of daemons and beastmen with its mighty tusks.

But regardless of the distractions, Taylor did not let go of her prize. She had spent too long and killed too many to give it up now. She was going to get out of the benighted realm, whether she had to drag Dorghar kicking and screaming with her.

Gripping a bronze collar around the juggernaut's neck, Taylor yanked hard. "Yield I said!"

To Taylor's surprise, Dorghar did stop moving. Not because she said so, but because from deeper into the cave systems, near the lava pools on the far end, Taylor saw hundreds of Gors, Khorngor Bestigors, Khornataur, and even Bloodletters flood out, drawn by the scent of blood and sounds of violence.

Dorghar chuffed, eager to spill the blood of its captors as it seemingly found an accord with Taylor. Taylor nodded, and pointed her sword forward. Dorghar didn't wait as it charged forward, goring through a dozen Khorngors with its savage horn as Taylor slashed at those around her. Taylor chopped and hacked, slaying daemon and beastman alike until her armor was covered in so much blood that she appeared a berserker of Khorne.

When too many beastmen or daemons swarmed her, she would let loose a torrent of flames, creating ashen husks that Dorghar easily smashed through. Taylor couldn't tell how long this wanton slaughter went on for. She would kill one Khornagor with a thrust through his chest, maim the sword arm off a bloodletter with a riposte, burn a back of gors loosing arrows on them at a distance.

Killing a minotaur, maiming a razorgor, burning shrieking harpy. Killing, maiming, burning. Kill! Maim! Burn!

The bucking of Dorghar almost threw Taylor off her mount, breaking her out of her blood revelry. It appeared that they were stuck in the center of thousands of beings, each braying and screaming for her blood, desperate for just a single lick. Taylor felt the Dorghar's form ripple once more, this time shrinking in size.

Taylor watched as Dorghar shifted into the form a black furred Sabretusk. Roaring, the now feline daemon leaped through the crowd of Beastmen, landing atop a Khonataur and ripping its meaty throat out with its long fangs. Dorghar jumped from beastman to beastman, escaping the crushing melee.

Once they were freed, Taylor called upon a Fire Storm upon the moshing pit of Khornate followers and watched them get sucked up into the blazing tornado. Taylor's satisfaction at their slaughter did not last however, a bellowing roar came from the tower staircase Taylor had come from.

Stepping through a comically small cave for how big he was, Taurox the Brass Bull had arrived. Taylor felt Dorghar shift once more, the feline shape growing in size as bat wings sprouted from its spine, and its tail lost all fur in exchange for a stinging exoskeleton. Dorghar had shifted into a manticore.

With a gut-wrenching roar, Dorghar took flight and charged Taurox. Taurox roared back bellowing his challenge The Brass Bull, true to his name, was a massive Minotaur dedicated to Khorne, his very flesh transformed into metal as a blessing from the Blood God. He wielded two ferocious looking axes and his blood red eyes showing nothing underneath but vicious madness.

Dorghar slammed into the Doombull, claw rending and teeth biting, but for all its fury, it could not pierce the hide of Taurox. With a mighty swing of his axe, Taurox slammed into Taylor's midsection, and Taylor was pretty sure Dorghar twisted so the blow would strike her. The impact was torturous, easily enough to pulverize any normal knight to paste and flecks of blood. Taylor's Chaos enhanced flesh and the Armour of Morkar held, but she was nearly taken off of Dorghar's back.

Gritting her teeth, Taylor raised her blade into the air and drove it down upon the meat of Taurox's shoulder. And to her shock, the wolf blade she had carried for so many years shattered upon the bull's brass flash. Taylor's eye went wide as she gaped. The wolf blade may have been corrupted under her power, but it was still a master wrought weapon blessed by the wolf god Ulric. It was a cold, unholy weapon that would sear apart daemons she cleaved through, but now it was shattered. What manner of beast was Taurox that his flesh alone could do that?

These thoughts swirling through her mind, both she and Dorghar were too slow to reach as Taurox followed up his onslaught. He brought his own axe down on Taylor's shoulder, breaking her clavicle through her armor through sheer force alone as a follow up uppercut swing of his off hand axe drove into Dorghar's underbelly.

The Chaos Steed howled in pain as blood, smoke, and flames poured out of its stomach and onto the ground, and Taylor was snapped out of her shock. "Fly us up!" Taylor shouted right into its ear as she pulled back on Dorghar's mane.

Without hesitation, Dorghar spread his wings and went airborne, putting distance between them and Taurox. Taylor looked down, and watched as Taurox howled in rage after them. Immediately gors flung javelins and shot short bows as them, Dorghar spun around, dodging the projectiles as it tried to slam Taylor into stalactites on the cave ceiling. Taylor snarled beneath her helmet. As much as it galled her, as much as the very idea of fleeing made her sick to her stomach, she needed to retreat. The greatest warlords were the ones who lived.

"Damnation beast, listen to me!" She screamed once more into Dorghar's ear. "We must leave. We have no weapon which can best the Brass Bull, and your fellow prisoners will only last so long before they are overrun!"

Taylor glanced down back at the cages. She could see bloodletters climbing atop the wooly mammoth she saw earlier and piercing its hide with daemonic blades, meanwhile the Hydra lost all its heads to a herd of minotaurs.

"We must leave, now!" Taylor shouted once more.

And to her surprise once more, Dorghar shifted form again, back into the equine shape she found it in, but now sporting two, ebony black pegasus wings. Galloping through the air, Dorghar moved at speeds even faster than before, almost sending Taylor flying off as it dashed for the roof of the cave.

"What are you doing, you stupid beast!?" Taylor screamed as Dorghar kept going faster, and faster. Fast enough that the wind alone almost sent Taylor flying, fast enough that it ran faster than Taylor could see as Dorgrah ran into the ceiling.

For the briefest of moments, Taylor blacked out. When she came to, she was still on Dorghar, and the two of them were not a stain atop the cave system. Instead, they were flying above the brass tower, back in the blood red skies of Haemorrhagia.

It took a moment for Taylor to process what just happened. They… teleported. Dorghar could teleport? Taylor laughed. She couldn't help it. By the Four undivided, Dorghar was a Brute, Change, Blaster, Mover all wrapped into one. It was a monstrous thing, and it was hers. She looked around and she could see for miles. She could see the bloody geysers and volcanoes of Haemorrhagia spew crimson fluid into the air. She could see her warcamp, situated far on the horizon. And in the far distance, opposite her camp, Taylor could see a mountain. A mountain so tall it looked like it could eat the sun. And in her heart, Taylor knew that was her next destination.

The laughter died as she looked down at Dorghar, its baleful red glare now focused on her. Before Taylor could speak, Dorghar nose dived, once again flying faster than Taylor could control.

Taylor howled as the flames around Dorghar grew hotter and hotter, shifting from red, to blue, then to white. Then she saw nothing as something hit Dorghar, and she was flung off her horse in an unstoppable wave of pain.

When Taylor's eye opened, she saw only smoke around her. The air stunk of smoke and charred flesh, and her ears rang from a mighty explosion she could barely remember. Every bone in Taylor in Taylor's body ached while her flesh felt raw and seared.

Pushing herself to her feet, Taylor saw the smoke and steam around her clear, and she realized she was in a pit. A crater. That's when Taylor realized what happened. Taylor wasn't hit by something atop Dorghar. Taylor hit something atop Dorghar. Apparently, to finally dislodge Taylor from its back, Dorghar flew with the speed of a comet, if not outright transformed into a comet, and crashed into the wasteland.

Taylor groaned in pain, but not all was lost. While Dorghar succeeded in dismounting Taylor, Dorghar itself was only a few meters away, once again a horse, and struggling to stand like a newborn foal. Snarling, Taylor approached Dorghar. When the horse turned its head to face her, Taylor struck it across the side, her gauntleted fist sending the beast sprawling.

When Dorghar attempted to stand once more, she struck it again, then again, then again. "You will yield to me, daemon! I am the Everchosen! Harbinger of the Dark Gods and your new master! You will now bend before me," Taylor wrapped her powerful arms around the Daemon horse's neck, "Or you will break."

At Taylor's words, Dorghar stopped struggling. Its crimson eye turned to look at Taylor, thinking, calculating, weighing its choice. And to Taylor's surprise, Dorghar spoke back to her. It was an unintelligible language, a demonic black speech that Taylor did not and could not understand.

But Taylor felt the meaning behind the words. Slowly, Taylor let go of Dorghar, and the Chaos steed stood. Reaching its full height Dorghar gazed upon Taylor once more, before bending down for its new rider.


A/N 1/11/2025: Dorghar's ability to to transform is something I wish they put into Total War Warhammer III. Maybe not be able to do it in game, but instead give Archaon the horse mount, pegasus, juggernaut, and dragon mounts as an option. Anyway, getting closer to getting out. Hope you all had a great new years, and I'll see you in the next one!