A/N: Tzeentch is a really sore loser.

Chapter 7 – Uridimmu Is the Least of My Problems

(II)

"I, Nimrod, High King of the Graelings, challenge you to a duel."

"The fuck you say?"

Seeing as I reached his hip only because my incomplete growth spurt had finally kicked in, it was a reasonable reaction. "A duel." I pointed my all-new crucible steel sword at him while my banner unfurled majestically above me from the end of my longspear, an Ivory Tower connecting the earth to the sun amidst a black sky full of stars. "To the pain."

"What am I seeing?" Svengar muttered in disbelief. "I don't know what I'm seeing, Priest! Tell me what I'm seeing."

"A stripling," the Bloodbeard with the longest and reddest beard replied, just as bewildered. "A boy that done killed the Raven's Champion in one hit."

"That's what I thought," the giant man said in disbelief. "Gods damn, kid, who the hell let you out of the house? Whose treasures did you steal? Is someone helping you?"

"Besmirching my honor leads to the same end, I hope you realize," I said calmly as my banner came alight with shimmering golden light, warming and calming the sea gale around us. I tossed a second sword on the ground behind me for the Grail Knight to use, and raised my first one to point at the giant's chin. "To the pain."

Svengar fingered the two giant hammers at his belt. "That's a new one."

"To the pain means this: if we duel and you win, death for me. If we duel and I win, life for you. But life on my terms."

"Haha!" Svengar laughed disdainfully, unhooking his weapons instead of what I'd actually expected, that he'd underestimate me enough to try to subdue me bare-handed. "You may look like a Norscan but you don't know shit about how we work, boy. You're a thrall's son, aren't you?"

"The first thing you lose will be your feet." His guess didn't bother me. It was accurate, but for all the wrong reasons. "Below the ankle. No magic healing, you're Khorne's man through and through. You'll have stumps available to use within six months. Then your hands, at the wrists. They heal somewhat quicker. Five months is a fair average. Next your nose. No smell of dawn for you. Followed by your tongue. Deeply cut away. Not even a stump left. And then your left eye-"

"And then my right eye, and then my ears right?" Svengar scoffed.

"Wrong," My voice could finally carry farther than ten meters, now that the wind was somewhat tame. "Your ears you keep, so that every mocking shriek and laugh of every child shall be yours to cherish—every babe that weeps in fear at your approach, every woman that cries 'Dear gods, what is that thing?' will reverberate forever with your perfect ears."

"Damn fine words," Svengard grunted. "Who'd you steal them from?"

"A man of gold," I admitted without shame. Humanity had the real article long before it dreamed up its first artificial facsimiles, how fortunate that I was there to witness when their wisdom ruled. "You will never witness their like."

"Neither will you if you don't stop while you're behind, boy."

"Does that mean you accept my challenge?"

"Allow me," spoke Lord Marcus behind me.

"Are you sure?" I asked without turning around, even as Svengar and all the rest snapped their attention to the man. "You're not exactly at full-"

My cervical spine shattered as the side of my neck was struck with enough force to slash a cliff in half.

For one stunned moment, my spirit lagged behind my flesh as my body momentarily, literally died.

That… came from – behind!

By the time my vertebrae regrew and my neck wrenched back into place, I was past the edge of the summit and in full freefall.

My flight ended with a crash through the roof of a fishmonger's warehouse.

With oil sizzling on my red-hot flesh and covered in fish guts, I staggered to my feet and felt at my neck. I'd made myself the best suit of armor I could with the means available to me, but the twelve talismans embedded in the gorget were the most important. They'd been the hardest to make by far, I'd had to use the Gold Wind to imbue the strongest substance not made of carbon that I could produce with my meager technological means, then shape the pea-sized beads into the likeness of a neutron star with microscopic precision. With the feel of glass marbles and virtually transparent, they were each a protective charm capable of empowering my armor with defensive properties equivalent to neutronium.

Once.

Two were gone. One to the crash just now, and one to when… Lord Marcus of Bordeleaux used my own loaned sword to try cutting my head off.

If not for my talismans he'd have succeeded, armor or not.

I ignored the wide-eyed thralls staring at me and kicked the door open on the way out.

A backstab. Or slash. The most inconceivably dishonorable thing possible for a Grail Knight, short of literal murder and flesh crimes.

The Legendary Grail Companion landed some five meters in front of me with a hard thud of bare feet upon frozen earth. He'd jumped straight down from the spur high above, and landed right on his feet with just a bend in the knees to break his fall.

"Tzeentch you sore loser," I muttered in disbelief a what I could now see past his flesh, the brands and chains now not on him had been impairing my second sight in more ways than I'd known. The chains weren't just to suppress, but to maintain the seeming over this skinsuit – not just a skinsuit, a spirit suit around a soul that wasn't Marcus of Bordeleaux. "This is why you saved Svengar?"

"My Master knows all things, Pretender," Zanek the Many spoke through the mouth of the body that had once belonged to the Grail Knight, stepping forward with euphoric resolve in his eyes. "But what he most dislikes is when upstarts think they can ruin his games."

"So he breaks his toys himself?" I began circling him and pulled my mace, my own sword had been lost sometime in the fall. Attempts to channel the Winds ran into problems when the Winds proved too sluggish and thin. Belatedly, I noticed chain links scattered about the place. The chain he'd been bound in, he must have tossed the pieces down ahead of his own jump down from the cliff. Plans within plans within plans, fucking Tzeentch. "The Lady of the Lake won't fail to fix this vulnerability in her blessing, now that she knows about it."

The man possessing the stolen body laughed in tandem with the twisted, torturously tangled form of the Lord of Change inside him. The great daemon of Tzeentch was twined and sutured through the spirit that the soul of Marcus no longer inhabited, and thus through the one divine blessing on this world that should have been truly incorruptible. "How did you even manage it?" I asked, and not just because I hoped Chaos' love of monologuing would buy me some time to reassess.

"You won't get any answers from me," Zanek rebuffed me, to my hidden dismay. "You-"

"ZANEEEEEK!"

The both of us jumped away as Svengar the Giant crashed right where Marcus – Zanek had been, outright cratering the ground.

"You-!" A chaos hammer swung out of the dirt cloud, almost knocking the smaller man's head off if he hadn't dodged. "Treacherous-!" The second daemon hammer came in a wide haymaker, Zanek barely ducking out of the way. "SNAKE!" The first hammer came down at Zanek's head, forcing the body snatcher to bring his sword to deflect, which he managed barely but fully thanks to his protective ward briefly flaring around the blade in my witchsight, damnations, did he truly keep all the powers and not just strength and skill-? "How long?! How long have you been pulling me by the nose? When did you do this? Not enough that your craven master interfered with my fight the first time, now this?! Did you sabotage our duel this time too? Was it even him at that point? WAS IT ALREAY YOU IN THERE?!"

The giant hadn't stopped attacking the whole time, and finally landed a hit that Zanek couldn't bend or deflect.

Witchsight saw the ward flare again. Zanek only skid back several meters instead of being launched like a rocket in the opposing building. "Do you not hear them, oh King?"

Hear what?

The answer came in the shape of magic worked elsewhere, far off, on the voices of people and the wind, carrying to our ears shouts and screams from all over the port town, battle cries and shouts of allegiance to "The Lord, the Lord, the Lord in the Tower!"

But I didn't bring anyone with me into the town, specifically to avoid tricks…

My mood turned from hot to absolute zero when I realized what he'd done. "You're going to die," I promised with my harshest look at the chaos sorcerer who'd just orchestrated a false flag against me. "And it will be final."

"You are welcome to try," the stolen mouth replied with all the Grail Knight's stolen dignity, brazenly turning his back on both of us to leave. "If you survive the night, that is."

"YOU FUCKER!" Svengar sounded like a rattling stampede as he roared inside his horned helm. "I'M NOT DONE WITH YOU-"

"Don't-!" I shouted.

But the Chaos Lord ignored me and charged after the man, swinging both chaos hammers at his back as hard as he could.

Zanek turned just enough to blunt the strike with his sword. My weapon finally broke, but the man didn't and instead leaned into the hit. He shot off like a rocket from the giant's supernatural strength, flying into the night, out of my line of sight. I tried to magic him back from range despite the chain's interference, but the Grail Night blessing proved impervious to what weak, hasty spells made it through the suppression from the scattered chain fragments.

Almost immediately after, a massive magical channeling began further down the shore, pulling all the Winds towards the area where Zanek had just been tossed.

Svengar was already stampeding in that direction, bellowing oaths of vengeance with every step. I was marginally faster jumping roof to roof. I didn't stop to do something about the people randomly attacking other people in my name all over the place. I didn't pause at the sight of men, women, warriors and thralls fooled or mind-twisted into attacking their allies and fellows.

I only paused when three screams became howls and three literal werewolves suddenly jumped in my face from the street below, claws and slavering muzzles aimed to tear me to bits.

Ulfwerner!

Wolf Warriors, men able to transform their shape into a grotesque half-man and half-wolf form. "Get out of my way!" I barreled right through them as best I could, ignoring the rents in my armor as I chose haste over defense, they weren't full match for me in strength or speed-

But together they delayed me just enough.

Just as I finally outran the wolf warriors, the sight of the harbor was torn through by a many-colored rift through reality, ripped open not by the body-snatching Zanek but yet another one, identical to the one I'd killed up on the ridge.

"I did not interfere with your duel, oh High King!" Marcus said as he stepped into the rift, at the same time as the other Zanek next to him. "The Knight was himself all the way to your ship. Ask your Bloodfathers."

I was getting ready to call on Eununcia and my Anima to suppress the breach, even as I ran, when I realized I wouldn't succeed even if I put everything into it. On the other side of the tear, overlapping the same tear, there was the rippling sight of twisting pathways coming out through another Chaos Rift. The massive Chaos Rift in the mountains to the west, where the camouflaged camp had been – the other Zanek! I could almost glimpse him on the other side.

I burned a talisman to maximize speed and leapt forward in the hopes of following through after them.

Zanek's composure finally cracked – both of them – but their shock at seeing me literally dive into a chaos rift after them against all common sense was cut off when it snapped shut in my face just before I reached it.

Fucking Tzeentch!

I skid to a halt in the dirt, seething with futile anger, and finally had no excuse to let the werewolves tear into me unchallenged anymore.

Milking the theme to death, I thought in angry realization. He became a Bretonnian, and a Bretonnian entering Athel Loren could – can come out of the forest years or even centuries apart, even earlier, if the elves don't kill him or worse for the trespass, sometimes hundreds of miles away.

And the Chaos Wastes were the same, not long ago. The Zanek in the mountains and the ones here, they managed to – what? Create an artificial version of the bizarre aspatial and atemporal areas that used to occur up there? How much power did that take? How many Chaos Sorcerers? How many Zaneks were there? The one I killed, Marcus, the one that opened the rift here, with the one in the Mountains that made four, where were the other six? Carrying out the false flag in my name even now, here? Elsewhere? Could I even hope he was limited to the ten copies mentioned in the Prophecies Unlamented, about the upper limits of multiplication?

Even then, such power – more copies must be syphoning off… what? To achieve this? Some hidden or out of the way waystones I didn't just stumble over in my astral projections? Or maybe Zanek syphoned the power right out of the Rift itself, over in the mountains?

But how? The Rift was barely even there most days, even now.

The Rift looked fully present and almost stable during the spell, damned buzzard playing favorites? And Khorne just lets his devout go along with everything happening around the man?

I finally beheaded the last wolf-man and stood seething as the spirit-rattling clangor of the Warp was replaced by the ongoing noises of battle, and people screaming in all sorts of emotions from suddenly mutating where they stood, from even that very brief exposure. Pink horrors were amidst the living now too, ever-shifting balls of gleeful psychic rape, and blue horrors that ran away from Svengar and I to torment weaker prey.

I breathed fire at the only daemon foolish enough to attack me, bursting it into two smaller, manic-woeful blue horrors that also burst into smoking pus because I wasn't finished spewing sun-hot flame.

All that power and preparation, the people being killed right now were surely used as sacrifices, but then why not summon a stronger daemon instead? Even some flamers or screamers – the torn veil could've allowed some to come through on their own too, but none did?

Power, will, morals, none of those were an issue for that sorcerer. But if he wasn't lying in his last words to Svengar right now…

He still wants Svengar – wants the Skaelings as an ally, if not underlings.

I caught my breath and turned to face the massive shape of Svengar the Giant, whose footsteps shook the ground even at normal walk. "The people killing yours in my name aren't mine."

"I don't care, boy." The Chaos Lord said with that unnatural calm that only a true berserker reaches when his rage transcended all mortal sense. "We'd have been at war regardless after what you did tonight, even without what you did tonight. No man can stand against the gods, but their patsies are a different matter. Khorne is with me, you can't imagine how furious he is at this mess, but you know what he's most pissed at?" His hands gripped his hammers so tight that his rage spilled out of them like molten fire. "The little pissant that's so big for his britches that the other three gods can't help messing His business over."

From his right, one of the Bloodfathers stepped forward and tossed me the sword I'd lost in the fall, and the banner spear I'd left up on the promontory. I picked them up and faced the giant armored man. "We could never have been friends, you and I, but we could have been allies."

"No," the Chaos Lord disagreed. "We couldn't."

For a moment, I seriously considered washing my hands of this mess with a point-black sphere of annihilation. But then…

Khorne would just be driven further into letting Tzeentch get away with things, just to spite me.

Instead, I dissolved my arcane marks, and instead of Ghyran or Shyish, tuned myself towards Chamon and Ghur.

The Gold Wind would potentially allow me to conjure any of the devastating weapons in my prodigious memory with the right spell component, like my talismans, but I didn't do that. I just needed it to adjust my equipment through the change, and keep it in one pieces. As for the Lore of Beasts, well…

However aptly it was name named, it wasn't like mankind was ever lacking in people who were more beast than man.

Channeling deeply of the amber wind, I transformed into my full-grown self, and then half-way to my first great self too, until I stood at the same height and heft as the Skaeling High King.

Svengar's arms slackened momentarily as he took in my new appearance.

"I was made into a fool today. For that, I will make amends. We'll live and die by my terms." I used the Gold Wind to turn my sword into a hoplon shield and my spear into a pollaxe, aiming it at him as the banner detached and shifted into a tabard. "But we'll fight by yours."

"… I changed my mind." Svengar hefted his hammers while the frost and caked blood started steaming off his big black armor. "Maybe we can be friends after all." I couldn't see his face through the helmet, but the grin I heard in his voice was the most hard-bitten sound I'd heard since Khorne's own scream. "We'll have all the time in eternity, when I follow you to Khorne's Brass Halls after I've butchered all your men and women and children and turned the oh so proud and mighty Graelings into an empty memory."

Part 3, plus an additional chapter (4 parts) are available on P treon (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).