by C. L. Werner
‘Fall back!’ Gotramm shouted. ‘Fall back towards the furnace!’
Grokmund managed to twist his head around, to see the position from which Gotramm intended to make his stand. The doors of the furnace were flung wide. Roaring flames shot from its maw. Horgarr stood near the gauges, working the controls that would adjust the fuel being pumped into the machinery. The endrinmaster was using the furnace to create a wall of fire to protect one flank. With the wall at their back, it would leave the embattled duardin only one front to hold against the foe. It was not much of a chance, but at least they would go down fighting.
A few of the duardin managed to break clear of the enemy to obey their captain. As they withdrew, the beastmen and humans pursued with vicious determination. The bird-headed beastkin dived down towards the Kharadron, the jaws on the undersides of their flying discs snapping and slavering. The masked cultists hurled balls of shimmering energy at their adversaries, felling a few and scorching the armour of others.
Thurik jogged over and grabbed Grokmund’s other arm. Together with Gotramm, they were able to drag him back into their chosen strongpoint. There was a moment of morbid satisfaction when a beastman tried to intercept them but instead overshot its target and plunged through the flames billowing out of the furnace. The disc-shaped daemon emerged from the fire unharmed, but the rider on its back was a screaming torch, fur and feathers sizzling away from the cooked meat of its body.
The beastkin’s screams were quickly eclipsed by the death-shriek of a duardin. Grokmund managed to lift himself enough to see the armoured warlord who had attacked the Stormbreaker with Skaggi impaled upon his glaive. The logisticator was thrust through the centre of his chest, lifted from the ground like a child’s doll. As vitality ebbed from him, the atmosphere in the refinery shifted, taking on a tangible feeling of doom and destruction.
Grokmund’s gaze was pulled to the cauldron of aether-gold, as was the attention of everyone within the cavernous chamber. Human, beastman, and duardin watched in shocked wonder as the glow around it intensified. Cultists fell to the floor as their daemon steeds evaporated from under their very feet. Screamers winked out of existence, their infernal substance drawn away to feed the power amassing in front of them.
The shadow Grokmund had seen in the furnace, the reflection of a great predatory bird, wasn’t anything to compare with the reality that oozed up from the cauldron.
The thing Grokmund had seen, the image Gotramm had climbed above the cauldron to observe, was more terrifying than any nightmare could imagine. It was tremendous of size, ten times the height of a duardin. Its body was lean and hungry, yet there was a suggestion of strength in its wizened limbs. Hands and feet ended in massive talons, the fingers and toes that supported them covered in a scaly texture. The rest of the humanoid body was feathered as were the condor-like wings that erupted from its back. Abominable eye-shaped markings shone from the tip of each feather. The thing’s head was poised upon a long, vulturine neck that looked much too thin to support it. The shape of the head was that of an eagle, the beak hooked and sharp. The eyes that bulged from its avian visage were multi-faceted like those of a moth or spider.
More horrible to Grokmund than the form the thing had assumed, more terrible even than the aura of malign might that it exuded, was the very nature of its substance. It wasn’t a thing of flesh and bone, even the arcane simulacrum of flesh that daemons assumed when trespassing in the Mortal Realms. This monster’s body was gold. From the top of its feathered head to the tip of its lowest talon, the fiend was formed of gold. Claws and feathers, arms and wings, all of it was a dull gold in colour. Even the terrible eyes with their grotesque facets, even they were golden.
The shadow, the reflection Grokmund had seen in the molten aether-gold, he had been wrong about what it was. He had thought it was some flaw in the ore, some eldritch parasite that had attached itself to his strike. Now he appreciated the monstrous truth. It wasn’t merely in his aether-gold, it was his aether-gold in the same way the hair in Grokmund’s beard was part of his own being.
He heard the sorcerer cry out in triumph. Grokmund could not recognise the barbarian’s language, but he understood at once the tone. This had all been by design. The sorcerer and the armoured warlord, they were the same ones who had brought the Stormbreaker down. He had been the only survivor – allowed to live so that the Iron Dragon could find him. Spared so he could lead them to the strike. Used by the forces of Chaos to bring about the profane manifestation that now stood before them in its golden splendour.
Grokmund had dreamed of building a legacy for himself, to ensure his name wouldn’t be forgotten. Now he saw that his legacy wasn’t what he had imagined it would be. This was his legacy, this daemon-horror clad in gold. He had hoped to bring a wondrous boon to the Kharadron. Instead what he’d brought his kinsmen was a monstrous doom.
Unwittingly, Grokmund’s ambition had restored the reign of the Prismatic King.
Chapter XIV
Down through the darkened vaults of the outpost Brokrin and Drumark made their way. Despite Drumark’s insistence that there was an imminent threat to their comrades in the refinery, he refused to accept Brokrin’s efforts to use the main concourse and take the direct route to the chamber. There was a less obtrusive ingress, Drumark claimed, a passageway used by the settlement’s thanes to spirit away their treasures from the refinery unobserved by the general populace. Drumark refused Brokrin’s efforts to reason with him, compelling the captain to follow along through the dark corridors. For almost an hour they crept through the shadows, and at each stage Drumark became a little more unsettled. Frustrated by his inability to find the passageway. Frightened that the daemon within him would regain its strength.
Brokrin could feel the change that swept through the atmosphere within Finnolf’s Fortress. The brooding desolation, rife with its haunting air of abandonment and tragedy, now took on a feel that was overtly malignant. It was a cold, stinging fire that reached into the soul with a thousand sharp claws. His pulse raced, his nerves tingled with the primitive fear of prey when the predator is nearby, stalking unseen in the darkness.
Drumark leaned against the wall, dragging great gasps into his battered body. He looked at Brokrin, his eyes covered by a rheumy sort of sheen. ‘Too late,’ he coughed. ‘We are too late. The Prismatic King has returned to claim his throne.’ These last words were spoken in a glottal croak utterly alien to Drumark’s voice. Despair shone in the sergeant’s gaze. He saw the look of alarm in Brokrin’s eyes and nodded his head. The possessing force was again exerting its influence upon him.
A shudder swept through Brokrin. It was not only the ghastly possession of Drumark that sent shivers through him. He had heard old legends about a terrible Chaos lord that had gone by the title of Prismatic King. It was said to have been destroyed by a champion of Sigmar. All of the stories were vague, but they agreed upon the nature of the Prismatic King, a fiend of unspeakable evil and unimaginable power.
Brokrin looked ahead, peering down the darkened corridor. In the distance he could see a weird, pulsating glow, golden in colour but somehow conveying an impression of incredible darkness. Faintly he could hear the sounds of battle.
‘The passageway,’ Drumark said, pointing towards the glow. ‘The tremor has thrown open the door. The glow is coming from the refinery. They have already called the Prismatic King. If we would stop him, we must hurry.’
Brokrin hesitated, every fibre of his being pleading with him to turn and run, but he could not. As repugnant as the glow and the power it represented might be, the thought of abandoning his crew was still more repulsive. When he heard a duardin voice cry out in a mix of horror and defiance, his course was decided for him.
Checking the charge of his volley pistol, Brokrin tried to hand his axe to Drumark. ‘Whatever is down there, we will stop it.’
Drumark pushed the axe away. ‘I have no need for your weapon,’ so
mething within him said. ‘You will need it more than I. Just get me close to the Prismatic King. Get me close enough that he can see and hear me. Get me close enough that he cannot fail to see and hear me.’ Drumark’s words collapsed into a guttural slobber that was part cough and part laughter.
Brokrin tried to keep the disgust from his mind. It was not Drumark anymore. Or at least it was not just Drumark.
Drumark shook his head. ‘Help me, cap’n. I am lost, but you can help make my finish count for something. Whatever has changed, we still share the same enemy.’
Another duardin cry from the refinery decided Brokrin. Tightening his grip on his pistol and axe, he hastened towards the glow and the sounds. He could hear Drumark following after him, his bare feet slapping against the stones, his foetid breath wheezing from his lungs. He tried not to think about what had happened to his friend, to wonder how much of the sergeant was still there. As he had said, whatever he was, Drumark could still fight a common enemy.
Savage shouts and cheers echoed from the refinery now, the triumphant howls of monsters and madmen. Brokrin felt the terrible might within the golden light, felt it rush out at him with the cloying filth of a harkraken’s ink. He pressed through the unclean miasma, forcing his way towards the refinery and nearer the source of the golden light. Cautiously he came to the open door. The base of a column obscured his view of the chamber beyond. When he peered around it his eyes were drawn inexorably to the colossal figure exuding the golden glow.
The Prismatic King emerged from a great cauldron, its giant frame wrought in gold. Brokrin recognised the sheen as that of aether-gold. How or why it had been possible, he did not know, but somehow the bird-headed daemon had used Grokmund’s strike to build for itself this physical incarnation.
A fascination of terror gripped Brokrin. All intention ebbed from his mind, all thought of action smothered by an awesome fear. To fight against this being was futile madness, the desperation of the damned! Dimly he realised he was groaning in horror, the sound climbing steadily, threatening to blot out all sanity.
Look away, mortal, the glottal voice that was not Drumark’s forced its way into Brokrin’s mind. Even the possessed voice had a quiver of fear about it, a tremble that had not been there before. Look away or lose your soul.
Drumark took hold of Brokrin, turning him aside and breaking his enraptured gaze. Brokrin looked across the refinery. The giant daemon was foe enough to consider, but there were scores of cultists and beastmen too. Brokrin recognised their leader in his baroque armour and blazing glaive as the same one who had attacked the Iron Dragon and her escorts, the same who had set upon the Stormbreaker and her fleet. His followers were scattered around the middle of the refinery in a broad perimeter except for a disfigured man with a feathered growth on his neck, who remained well behind that defensive line. Beyond the cultists, he could see Gotramm, Thurik, Horgarr, Grokmund and four other duardin making a last stand beside the open doors of the furnace. Their chances against the cult would be poor, outnumbered as they were, but with the daemon lord against them as well, they had no chance at all.
‘The only chance is the one you make for them,’ Drumark said.
Brokrin’s skin crawled at the idea the sergeant had reached into his brain to read his thoughts. It did not change the fact that he was right.
‘You have to resist the Prismatic King’s aura,’ Drumark told Brokrin. ‘You must steel yourself against its influence. Unless you can, all is finished. You must draw its attention before we can follow.’
Brokrin summoned up every ounce of determination inside him. He thought of honour and duty, obligations to clan and kin. He thought of his crew and what would be their doom unless he intervened. Trembling, he forced himself to look again upon the golden daemon.
The Prismatic King was moving now. As it stepped out from the colossal basin, its clawed foot expanded across the floor, exhibiting a strange semi-solidity, as though still straddling the line between metal and liquid. The beaked face turned downwards, staring in disdain at its distorted foot. Brokrin could feel the arcane power that pulsed through the golden giant as it willed its foot back into shape.
‘It must be destroyed before it can make itself complete,’ Drumark urged, his voice feeling like a pestilence in Brokrin’s ear.
Stealing out from behind the statue, Brokrin advanced upon the cultists standing between himself and the Prismatic King. His approach was possible only because the enemy was distracted, facing away from him, either staring up at the daemon in abject adoration or else watching Gotramm’s crew with undisguised malice.
Even as Brokrin made his stealthy advance, the Prismatic King was in motion. It stretched forth one of its great talons, pointing at Thurik. The arkanaut shrieked in agony as a wave of purple light swept down upon him in a coruscating flash. He collapsed to his knees as his flesh began to wither, sinking close to his bones. By the time his screams ended Thurik had been reduced to a mummified husk. Howls of anguish rose from the warriors around the furnace. Horgarr had to seize hold of Gotramm to prevent him from a vengeful charge towards the Prismatic King and its mortal vassals.
With its other hand, the Prismatic King pointed to one of its minions, the disfigured human with the hideous feathered growth sprouting from his neck. The cultist was suffused by the same purplish light, but instead of diminishing under its glare, he appeared to expand. An aura of terrible power rippled around the man, and Brokrin realised he must be a sorcerer.
Thurik’s death spurred Brokrin into immediate action. He brought his axe chopping into the side of a horned beastman, breaking its ribs and leaving it flailing on the ground. Its agonised bleating brought a masked human swinging around, a ripple-bladed sword clenched in his fists. Before the cultist could strike, Brokrin’s axe was hacking through his mask, crunching into his skull. As the man fell, Brokrin planted his boot on his chest and wrenched the blade free.
Brokrin’s violent assault brought more cultists rushing towards him. He opened up with his volley pistol, dropping two more of the masked humans and crippling a feathered beastman. Across the refinery, Gotramm’s crew rallied, shouting Kharadron war shanties as they rushed from their defensive position and flung themselves at the surrounding enemy.
The armoured warlord charged towards Brokrin, clusters of eyes gleaming balefully from behind the mask of his helm.
The duardin captain fired round after round at the cult leader, but each shot went spinning away, deflected by some invisible force.
The warlord drove at Brokrin with a crooked glaive, its edge rippling with eldritch fires. ‘You dare pit your luck against the destiny of Tamuzz?’ he raged as he swung at the duardin.
The captain ducked beneath the sweeping blade, feeling its fire sizzle against the top of his helm. He struck at the heft with his axe, managing to knock one of Tamuzz’s hands loose. The warlord stumbled, unbalanced by the abrupt shift of his grip.
‘My luck is already bad,’ Brokrin spat. ‘You will not make it any worse.’
Tamuzz drove back on the assault, bringing his glaive sheering down in an overhanded arc. Brokrin barely managed to swing to the side. He fired a last shot straight at the warlord’s face, disheartened when the bullet went spinning away without doing any damage.
‘I am Tamuzz, the chosen of Tzeentch!’ the warlord jeered. ‘My fate is not to be decided by any mortal.’
Brokrin brought his axe chopping around, crashing the blade against the glaive and sliding its edge down the heft. This time he slashed it across the warlord’s fingers. Tamuzz jerked back, recoiling as the armour was shivered and strips of metal gouged into his flesh. Brokrin grinned at his enemy. ‘I have naught to lose by trying,’ he snarled.
Drumark waited until Brokrin was engaged against Tamuzz and Gotramm’s fighters were distracting others of the cult, before he rushed out from behind the statue. The Prismatic King was still feeding Thurik’s stolen essenc
e into the sorcerer. Even so, it should have noticed him but for the disorienting nature of its transition from spirit into substance and the carnage initiated by Brokrin’s attack.
Drumark was determined that it would not have that chance. His mind cringed from the images of horror that raced through it, images of what the Prismatic King had done and of what it would do unless it was vanquished. He knew these were not his own thoughts but things fed to him by the daemon that had seeped into his body. How much was truth, how much was lies he could not tell. It did not matter. Of one thing he was certain, and that was that the Prismatic King had to be stopped.
Drumark hurried towards the Prismatic King. The great daemon’s malefic power boiled across his bare flesh. He could feel the cuts in his skin ablaze with torment, blood oozing anew as the scabs melted away. The Nurglish entity that had infected his soul crackled with enmity, ancient rivalry and eternal spite rippling through its diseased core.
The Prismatic King. Proud seneschal of Tzeentch who failed to prevent the advent of Sigmar’s Celestant-Prime! The Prismatic King who allowed into the Mortal Realms a force that continues to bring ruin upon the designs of Chaos.
The bitter hate of the plague daemon melded itself with Drumark’s own antipathy for the Tzeentchian cult. With cancerous tenacity it slithered through every corridor of his mind, leaving little pieces of itself until no corner of the duardin was spared. He could feel the sickness sweeping through him, the foulness bubbling in his stomach, the congestion building in his nose, the pulsing ache inside his skull. A hundred illnesses unleashed at once, filling him utterly, infesting him entirely. Yet somehow the plague did not weaken him. Instead it poured new strength into his quaking limbs. It gave him the stamina to forge ahead, marching through the malevolent aura wafting from the Prismatic King’s avatar.
