A/N: Tzeentch is a sore loser.
Chapter 7 - Uridimmu Is the Least of My Problems
(I)
"-. 1048 IC, Winter Solstice .-"
The Sarls and Skaelings together were the most poignant testament to the Norscans' tragic ability for doublethink. Despite that the two tribes considered each other to be foremost rivals in both battle and territory, the way they worshipped Khorne above all others was also close to identical. Because of this, they were somehow able to share ownership of their most holy site, the Altar of the Crimson Harvest. This harbor town not only was the port of call for sea raids, but also an altar dedicated to the Blood God, practically the most revered ritual site of both tribes. Moreover, it was also a staging ground into Troll Country by land, thanks to the Chaos fortress at its heart.
The town got its name from the sacrificial altar it was built around, located atop a prominent spur of the cliffs overlooking the docks far below, and beyond them the Bay of Blades. This placement already spoke to the twisted commonalities in the Skaeling and Sarl way of life. Just like Khorne stood above all other gods including the other Three, in their faith, so did the Altar of the Crimson Harvest sit far above the shrine to the gods Nurgle and Mermedus that the Bay of Blades itself was used as. The Skaelings even considered it to belong to the Blood God as well, as it was the place where disputes between them and the Sarls could be settled without recourse to full-scale war.
Whenever a disagreement between two lords couldn't be resolved any other way, the participants would each take charge of a ship, and the vessels would cast off into the bay alongside each other while throwing offal and blood overboard into the water. When that attracted enough bloodthirsty sharks, a sturdy plank was laid between the two vessels, and it was upon it that the two contenders would fight to the death.
That wasn't what was happening tonight. Tonight was the Winter Solstice. All day, like the days before, the Skaelings and Sarls had traded riches and slaves captured during the 'Crimson Harvest' from which the place got its name. Unlike the Graelings, the Skaelings did not indulge in torture because they considered it a Slaneshi custom. They also considered every slain enemy to be a sacrifice to Khorne, which meant that they didn't waste their new thralls in mass murder either, after coming home. For that reason, they had ended the year much fuller and wealthier than us, their neighbours to the northwest. While the Graelings had been sailing afar on their disastrous raid campaign in the South Sea, the Skaelings had embarked on an outright invasion of Bretonnia.
The slaves collected there had long since passed through here to be introduced to their new life as thralls to the Norscans. Most of them were taken north, into the Skaelings lands proper, with the best bound for Doomkeep deep in the mountains, the tribe's capital.
The 'Crimson Harvest' sacrificial ritual from which the place got its name was a rite much more individualistic than what the Graelings used to do, and commensurately performative. Quality over quantity, in a sense.
The altar proper was a rough block of granite bearing a sinister human-shaped indentation. On this night, water would be poured over it and a single victim quickly thrown down and held there until the water froze. This happened quickly, the season's weather was so cold it felt like icy daggers even without the howling winds that roared up here, on this cliff facing the angry sea without quarter or shelter. Once frozen, the sacrifice would be left here overnight. Naturally, almost all of them died. But in the rare cases where they managed to free themselves, leaving some bloody scraps of flesh behind, it was considered by the Bloodfathers – Khorne's Priests – that the sacrifice had earned Khorne's blessing and was thus worthy of life.
Unless the Bloodfathers didn't say so, as they'd done once when an Ungol Ice Witch had been put through the ritual and freed herself without leaving any blood or flesh behind. In that case the sacrifice was tossed to be eaten alive by 'God-touched' beasts just as it would have happened to the dead ones, at the claws of scavengers.
Khorne's priests were uncannily dependable. They were gifted with magic but shunned it in favor of strength of arms, training all their lives while attending to Khorne's holy places in isolation. In exchange, Khorne turned their innate magic inward to power stronger blessings than usual. As a result, the Bloodfathers were master warriors whose strength and skill was considered by many to be absolute even among Norscans champions. Most important of all, despite shunning magic, their dreams touched Khorne's domain and often contained visions of past and future battles, on which basis they advised chieftains how to best walk in Khorne's favor.
Unlike all other seers and shamans in Norsca, the Bloodfathers hadn't suffered a decline in influence due to the Silence. While their dreams had been rare and vague, their personal skill was good enough that they got by just fine otherwise, and the largely self-powered nature of their blessings of might meant they lost the least when I destroyed the Eye in the North.
Now, as I sat shrouded by a talismanic ward of invisibility within the flame of one of the eight great braziers surrounding the Altar, I got to watch the biggest negative consequence of my actions outside of the Ulthuan siege.
Lord Marcus, Duke of Bordeleaux, the battle-brother of the late Gilles le Breton himself who founded Bretonnia some mere seventy years ago, the Green Knight. Marcus was the Fourth Grail Companion, who should have slain the Skaelings' high king Svengar the Giant during the Tenth of the Great Battles of the Grail Companions to save the Dukedom of L'Anguille. Unfortunately, in a twist of fate that had to have been Tzeentch pre-emptively stacking the board ahead of the Silence – which he would have seen coming to some extent even if he couldn't perceive the cause, me, personally – the duel ended in a draw instead, due to a distraction by a flock of ravens just as Marcus would have cut the giant man in half as should have happened.
Outraged at the dishonorable intervention by the Raven, Khorne's Champion had taken his army and retreated from Bretonnia just as they'd have done on his death, in respect of his opponent's skill. But he vowed to return in the future for a rematch. That, ever so coincidentally, happened this very year.
Khorne obviously approved, because only a major blessing could have given Svengar a lifespan matching that of the Grail Knight – the enormous skaeling man looked to not have aged a day in the past seventy years. Conversely, the unfortunate reality of destroying the Chaos Gate was that the Silence also affected the Gods of Order and their interventions. Whether because the Blessing of the Lady required more active involvement from her, or its magical nature made it more vulnerable to the Silence than Khorne's, the outcome was clear: Svengar had won the rematch, and Marcus was subdued.
I was frankly amazed they had managed to take a Grail Knight alive. I wasn't there when it happened, unfortunately, so I didn't know how exactly that came about. Grail Knights didn't exactly suffer from exhaustion. Either Svengar had managed to decisively win a grapple – not at all unlikely, he was three meters tall and broad as a buffalo – or some truly preposterous magic had been used when Marcus was wounded badly enough. The brands and chains on him made magical scanning impossible right now, so I couldn't tell if some drug or spell was otherwise affecting him. I knew who'd made it happen though.
Zanek the Many. An epithet everyone would call him by if they knew of his ability. He was here walking alongside Svengar, constantly powering the bindings that kept the Grail Knight weak enough – barely – to be manhandled to his final doom. Zanek was here despite that I'd astrally scouted eastward just yesterday, and found him leading a host of Baersonlings on a subjugation mission against one of the last holdouts among the minor tribes.
That much could be explained by astral projection, as he wouldn't be the first human with the ability to maintain two thought streams at once (though for a Champion of Tzeentch the second would probably be a possessing daemon). But I'd also stumbled upon him hundreds of miles even further away, in the World's Edge Mountains, by pure accident when I flew through the excellent and completely magicless camouflage around his tiny observation camp. Like me, he'd gone there to investigate just what hellish insanity had occurred to tear a chaos rift big enough to swallow an entire mountain down to the bedrock.
The premonitions Valnir and I had been receiving through the Amethyst Wind had massively understated the disaster in store for everyone – the feelings presaged the appearance of a Chaos Rift that not only swallowed a whole mountain complex, but the specific mountain complex where lay the only Dwarf Hold whose skill in masonry and blacksmithing rivaled the craftsmen of the High King himself, in Karaz-a-Karak.
Karak Vlag.
The Unlamented Prophecies waxed poetic about the hold's great outer gates, upon which wrought-iron dragons were interwoven with scenes of battle depicting ancient legends of the time when the Dwarfs drove the great beasts from their caves around the newly founded hold. The only thing extolled even more loftily was the doom that fell upon the place when Galrauch, the first Chaos Dragon, was woken up from his long sleep beneath the hold by dwarves who, having stumbled upon his treasure-filled lair through their deeper and deeper mining, tried to steal the ancient beast's cursed hoard. The ensuing rampage and the armed defense by the dwarves was supposed to be so cataclysmic that it filled the Hold with so much magic that Karak Vlag was literally removed from the material realm. The place and the very mountains around it were then stuck constantly phasing between theOld Worldand theRealm of Chaosforever after, with hordes of Daemons filling the great halls where Dwarfen kings once ruled.
The problem was that this was only supposed to happen in the year 2301 I.C., and right now it was just 1048 IC. The even bigger problem was that this utter catastrophe took place when Grimnir happened to be in residence. You'd think that would be a good thing, with the Ancestor God's history slaying even worse creatures including the father of all dragons, by some claims. Except that it had been three months and the Chaos Rift was gaining strength on this side of the veil with no sign from him.
Until just a week ago the Rift wasn't even there, almost, it was imperceptible save for the obvious absence of an entire mountain complex that had been there until three months ago and change. The anomaly only existed in that single instant where the human eye skipped that one, junk frame.
That was no longer the case.
I wasn't inclined to believe Zanek was responsible for it, the clone of him at the Rift certainly didn't seem to be doing anything but observe. But he would surely become a problem, and probably already was one in ways I didn't know about because of his uncanny ability – since Zanek wasn't astrally projecting but he was in multiple places at once, I had to conclude that he'd been blessed by Tzeentch with the mutation of multiplication.
One that still let the fragment of him present here exert enough power to weaken the Blessing of the Lady of the Lake herself, somehow.
I can't give him any time to react, I grimly decided. It'll put me on the wrong foot with the Skaelings, to kill even a temporary ally without an upfront challenge, but Tzeentchian sorcerers are only more dangerous than this when they're talking.
The Grail Knight certainly didn't make it easy for the Norscans, it took four chaos warriors in full armor of bloody iron to drag him to the altar despite that he was covered in chains, manacles and a spiked collar, all etched with baleful symbols of magic and physical suppression.
"Where are your boasts now, oh great knight?" Jeered Svengar the Giant as he shoved the ageing, smaller man whenever he planted his feet a bit too firmly. "You called us savages because we struck at you. You called us heathens for denying your weak pretender-goddess. And where did that lead you? Death and blood!"
"Blood for the blood god!" roared the great procession of Skaelings and Sarls that had come to witness.
"Blood for the blood god, yes!" The Chaos Lord's laughter rumbled like a furnace from inside his brutal armor of black steel adorned with human skulls. That was the other factor that surely shifted the outcome of the rematch, the first time Svengar only had his boots, a pauldron and a loincloth protecting him. "And soon, your skull for the skull throne too!"
"Unless I live," Lord Marcus said calmly amidst the roars and jeers, despite his state. His beard was white, but he still had all his hair and his body was strong, not wizened.
"Unless." Svengar barked a laugh. "Try your best, I'd love to fight you a third time!" The Chaos Lord was being completely genuine too. "But know this – it is we who are the closest to the true gods. No matter how long you prolong your end, it is your end. And after, we most favoured shall go forth to plunder and crush your allies and their lands like we did yours, revel in their suffering and destroy them like we did you. Despair! For all that remains for you is the taste of northern cold and the end of your life, and in time the end of your whole world. Such is the will of the gods."
"Unless we win."
"Hah!" This time Svengar's laughter was mocking. "Bloodbeards! Take him."
The Bloodfathers stepped forward then, four huge Chaos Warriors with long red beards flowing down from their full bronze and iron helms, which were just as red. For some the color was natural, for others it was blood crusted in their hair from all the enemies they killed with their teeth. They grabbed the Grail Knight by one limb each and carried him to the altar. Four others stepped up to the four corners of the altar and poured steaming water down into the human-shaped indentation. When it was full and rippling in the howling gale atop that precipice, the priests lowered the knight into the indentation until only his face was still above the water surface, and held him down until the water froze.
That was the plan, at least.
The water didn't freeze. The anti-magic properties of the brands and chains on the knight were strong but aimed inwards. My own little alterations to the altar were useless against them, but that was fine as long as just the outmost water stayed hot enough to warm the rest. I rubbed my thumb over my far too flimsy talisman shaped like a miniature Reach Mark XI Railgun while I waited for the reaction.
"Ware!" Zanek shouted, looking around as he began pulling on the Winds. "Treachery is afoo-"
My talisman grew to full size in the air above me and became the very thing it represented just long enough to launch a single round.
BOOM
With the sound of a shrieking gong, a solid steel slug traveling at 2,500meters per second was stopped by one of the strongest magical wards I'd yet encountered in this life, which was why Zanek's head was only speared through by the javelin I'd tossed in the slug's wake, instead of being pulverized along with everyone behind him and the ground.
"Khargash!" "Bloody Brass-!" "Bedamned-!" "What just-?!"
BOOM
A second railgun talisman became dust in the wind just as quick as the first, but it was much easier to avoid accidentally hitting just the one person this time.
The projectile shattered Marcus' chains, and the Crimson Altar too, spraying the eight Priests of Khorne with a rumbling shower of granite.
"What the fuck?!" Svengar bellowed, loud enough to overpower the uproar from everyone else as the Bloodfathers jumped away from the suddenly free Grail Knight. "What craven treachery is this? Who's there?! Show yourself, coward!"
"The brasiers!" Yelled one of the priests.
I jumped off mine just before Svengar toppled it with his hammers.
Garmr and Gormr, I thought as their daemonic nature shone through in that moment. I thought they were axes, but maybe they change shape to fit what the wielder is best at.
I landed between Marcus and the rest. "Svengar, High King of the Skaelings." The Grey Wind talisman that had hid me was now dust, and there was no fire to conceal my body heat either, for whatever it was worth. "I, Nimrod, High King of the Graelings, challenge you to a duel."
Parts 2 and 3, plus an additional chapter (4 parts) are available on P atreon (karmicacumen), Ko-fi (karmicacumen) and Subscribestar (karmic-acumen), along with advance chapters for The Unified Theorem (Warcraft), my HP multicrossover Everything, Everywhere, one Thing at a Time, and the pilot chapter for a new story called A Backwards Approach to Clarke's Law (Highschool DxD X-Over, Inspired Inventor).