Overlords of the Iron Dragon

by C. L. Werner

  The bubbling croak that spilled from Drumark’s voice was nothing he could recognise as his own. The slobbering sounds that fell from his lips were not words, and yet they had meaning. Meaning more strange and hideous than he could fully fathom. They were power, evil transformed into sound.

  Words have power, but in the Mortal Realms it needs a mortal voice to speak them. The perfidy of magic. Only a mortal tongue moved by a mortal will can invest meaning into those sounds. A mocking shiver swept through Drumark’s soul as the daemon continued. You must learn and speak. It must be from you. But for that I could have extinguished your identity any time after your fight with the sorcerer’s spy.

  You have become a pawn in a game played between jealous gods. It is still in your power to resist me, and in resisting you may save your soul. But that will bring the Prismatic King victory. It will mean sacrificing the lives of all your companions to their enemies. Your soul against their lives. That is the wager.

  Drumark looked down at his scarred skin, understood the meaning of the symbols scratched into his flesh. They were the same as the sounds the plague daemon had spoken. Not simply sounds, but a name. A True Name.

  ‘Yth’nitzzilik,’ Drumark intoned, the daemon helping him shape the sounds. ‘Yth’nitzzilik,’ he repeated the ghastly intonation, the noise somewhere between a vulture’s call and a wolf’s howl. As he spoke he could feel his tongue shifting, changing into a new and abomin­able shape. He fought down the urge to vomit and repeated the name a third time.

  The mutant mouth upon his shoulder echoed the name, whispering it into his ear, urging him to keep uttering it. Now the unleashed power of Nurgle’s daemon bubbled up across Drumark’s face. Oozing nodules sprouted from his lips, crimson pustules bulged from his brow, his cheeks shrivelled into fleshless wisps of skin, clumps of hair fell from his beard. All the malign energies of the plague daemon lent themselves to his words, but there was a price for such power.

  The golden giant swung around. The Prismatic King’s beak opened in a squawk of fury, the sound crashing through the outpost like a clap of thunder. Its scintillating eyes glowered, losing their metallic sheen as the monster within peeked through.

  Yet even as the Prismatic King turned upon its enemies, the arcane compulsion of its True Name afflicted it. The great foot-talons gouged into the floor, losing shape and substance, pooling outwards in a sticky mire that held the Lord of Change fast.

  The cuts on Drumark’s skin shone with an inner light, blazing into the daemon’s eyes. He staggered nearer to the golden fiend, forcing it to stare at him, to both see and hear its True Name. Into the croaking sounds Drumark fed a command, an intention within the word. He felt the Prismatic King railing against his order. Like fire, thoughts blazed into his mind. A cascade of threats and promises that drove the Nurglish daemon into the very corners of his awareness.

  You can live, the Prismatic King told him. I will burn away the force that possesses you. Temptation became threats. If I fall, I will wait for you in the Realm of Chaos and your cursed soul will be tormented until the sundering of all realities!

  Drumark fought against the Prismatic King’s demands. He thought of his comrades. Their lives were in his hands. That was all that mattered. Fiercely he uttered the command for the ninth time. Before him, the golden body lost its suppleness, stiffening and hardening, freezing in place.

  ‘Defiler!’ The epithet was screamed by the sorcerer the Prismatic King had been feeding Thurik’s energy into. Brandishing his staff, he sent a spiral of burning light searing into Drumark. Under the arcane surge the diseased pustules littering his body burst, their infected strength evaporating. His skin blackened, his bones contorted into new and ghastly shapes. Such hair that had not fallen out erupted into an explosion of colour. The mutating beam ripped through Drumark, wrenching him asunder.

  Drumark collapsed as his deformed knees buckled beneath his weight. His voice faltered as his jaw fused into a bony mass. The cuts across his skin sloughed away. Yet still he persisted. The sorcerer’s magic was killing him, had in fact made his death inevitable, but it was doing so far slower than his enemy intended. The infection of Nurgle opposed the transformations of Tzeentch, and in that opposition there was a lingering existence.

  Drumark brought his fingers raking across the exposed meat of his chest, scratching anew the symbols that had marred his skin. The mutant mouth on his shoulder howled out, louder and more persistent, speaking not with the plague daemon’s voice but that of the duardin.

  Towering above the fading Drumark, the Prismatic King struggled against the force of its own True Name. It stretched forth one of its gigantic claws, arcane energies glowing in the tips of its fingers. A wave of magic leapt forwards, searing down into Drumark, evaporating his arms, searing the flesh from his skull. Yet still the abominable essence of Nurgle’s daemon sustained him.

  Defiantly, Drumark raised the wet bones of his exposed skull and cried out the Prismatic King’s True Name again. The golden giant’s frame shuddered, limbs stiffening still further as the duardin’s command imposed its dominion over the great daemon.

  Grokmund looked away from the mechanisms that fed the furnace as Gotramm cried out to the remaining duardin. ‘Earn a death worthy of your ancestors!’ Gotramm shouted as he led the remainder of his crew out against the cultists. Brokrin’s attack had inspired the flagging hope of the duardin. A moment before they had been ready to sell their lives at a dear cost to their foe. Now they charged forwards to make the enemy pay for every drop of blood.

  Grokmund alone lingered behind. It was not the wounds he had suffered under the pounding wings of the screamer but much deeper injuries that held him back. He had been used, monstrously exploited by the fiends of Chaos. He had been unaware of what the tainted aether-gold really was, so absorbed in its amazing possibilities that he had not questioned why it was so amazingly potent. The aether-gold had been nothing but a lie, bait to ensnare the Kharadron. A means for the daemonic horror to take shape once more.

  He thought of Admiral Thorki and all his crewmates on the Stormbreaker, all the duardin that had been lost with the rest of Barak-Ungrin’s fleet. He thought of the Iron Dragon’s escorts and those from her own crew who’d been killed. All those lives were on Grokmund’s hands, their blood dripping from his fingers. It was his dream that had brought them all to their doom. A dream built from a daemon’s lie.

  A dream sustained by his own lust for recognition. In his way, Grokmund felt he was even greedier than Skaggi. He had let his ambition blind him to the things he should have seen for himself, to keep him from asking the questions he should have asked. If it were only himself who paid the price for such hubris perhaps it would have been something he could bear.

  The crackle of sorcery caused Grokmund to cringe back towards the furnace. He thought of Thurik’s grisly death as the Prismatic King turned him into a smouldering husk. But it was not against him that this magic was turned. Gazing beyond the embattled figures of cultists and duardin, he could see the golden daemon and, standing near its feet, the mutilated figure of Drumark. The sergeant looked completely broken, flayed and ragged, wracked by both disease and injury. Yet still he fought. Still he struggled to oppose the enemy. The sorcerer’s magic burned across his body and still he refused to submit.

  Grokmund noticed something else as well. The Prismatic King did not help its sorcerous minion. The huge daemon stood frozen in place, its colossal frame only capable of the slightest motion as it tried to free itself from its paralysis. Unspeakable rage shone from its eyes as it glowered down at Drumark.

  How this could be, why it had happened, these were questions Grokmund had no answer for. He did not need any. It was enough that the daemon was stopped. But how long would it be stopped? The fiend’s dread aura still filled the refinery. Whatever had happened to it, the Prismatic King was not vanquished. It was still here, waiting for the moment it would be free once more.<
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  That was something Grokmund could not let happen. He spun around, looking back at the furnace. His eyes fell on the battery of cylinders that fed the great fires burning in its belly, untold gallons of caustic chemicals and incendiaries that could melt the strongest ore and transmute aether-gold from gas to liquid. He looked too at the bank of emergency release valves. In that moment his decision was made.

  ‘Back to the ship!’ Grokmund howled, praying his warning would carry to Gotramm and the others. He repeated the cry, finally causing Horgarr to look back. The endrinmaster saw him point at the valves and at once a grim look came upon Horgarr’s face.

  The endrinmaster knew what Grokmund was about to do. Horgarr passed the alarm to the other duardin. They fell back from their enemies, withdrawing into a tight knot of axes, pikes and pistols. When the moment came, they would be ready to act, ready to flee the lethal torrent Grokmund would unleash.

  Grokmund looked again at the battery of levers. Better than anyone, he could guess what that cocktail of chemicals would do when it was unleashed. The other duardin were far enough away that they would have some chance of outrunning the torrent when it came. For himself he knew there would be no escape. With that understanding came a crawling horror. He was not afraid to risk his life to save his comrades, but this was not simply risking his life. This was certain death, a horrible and atrocious kind of death. That knowledge made him pause.

  Then Grokmund heard Drumark’s tortured cries. He could see the sergeant being ripped apart by the sorcerer’s magic. Despite the agony he was enduring, Drumark refused to lie down and die. He remained defiant, struggling to oppose the slaves of Chaos even as his body was broken by witchcraft.

  Resolutely, Grokmund lunged for the levers. He reached them just as several Chaos cultists came charging for him, belatedly noticing the lone duardin who had lingered behind the advance of his fellows. The spheres of crackling magic they cast upon Grokmund sizzled against his back. Pipes from his atmospheric anatomiser were ruptured, spraying gas into the air. He stumbled, but not enough to stay him from his purpose. His fingers tightened about two of the levers. With a mighty heave, he brought them sliding down and across into the release notch.

  ‘Burn!’ he snarled at the masked cultists as the chemical pipes opened and their caustic contents sprayed onto the refinery floor. It was an emergency design, a last ditch safeguard against an explosion within the furnace itself. There were safer ways to bleed off the chemicals, to empty the reservoirs, but this was not one of them. It was a designed disaster to prevent an accidental cataclysm.

  For the cultists the distinction made little difference. The gushing flood of chemicals splashed down upon them, bathing them in searing liquids and viscous jellies. Masks melted into faces, armoured girdles dripped away from steaming bones. Shrieking in their death agonies, the cultists fell, the enchantments that enhanced their physicality fading as their existence exploded into a single instant of torture.

  Grokmund hastened to the other levers. His left foot was red torment as chemicals splashed across it, dissolving his iron boots in a matter of heartbeats. He flung himself at the controls, opening more pipes, adding more destruction to the deluge. Incendiary gases spilled across the chemical stream, igniting and adding a wave of snarling flames to the violent tide. Chemicals sloshed together, mixing into deadly combinations, sending clouds of noxious vapour steaming across the refinery. Grokmund saw a pack of beak-faced beastmen collapse as a bank of poisonous fog rolled over them.

  Grokmund pulled himself up onto the last bank of controls. His legs were just so much boiled meat now, the chemicals continuing to gnaw through his flesh. He clamped his jaws tight against the scream he would have given voice to, knowing if he started screaming he would never stop. He turned his head, determined to see the full measure of what he had unleashed before he became one of its victims.

  Gotramm and his crew had managed to exploit the confusion and terror that accompanied the burning tide. The duardin were fleeing back into the main corridor, gunning down the few enemies with the tenacity to try and intercept them. Grokmund was not sure if the flood would rise above the level of the refinery floor or if the gases being released would spread into the outer halls, but if Gotramm kept his crew moving, they should be able to keep ahead of the destruction.

  Brokrin was not able to escape as easily. Smoke and poisonous vapours billowed across the refinery, swiftly filling the vast chamber. The toxic smog blinded most of his enemies, but not Tamuzz. Staring through the smoke rising from the finger-candles plastered to his gorget, the warlord pressed his attack with undiminished ferocity. Brokrin fled to one of the kilns and scrambled on top of it. Using the higher position to hold his foe back, he was able to reach the chimney above the kiln and start pulling himself up. The warlord sprang after him, pursuing him into the chimney. A pair of beastmen rushed to follow their leader, but they were not quicker than the tide of chemicals and smoke. Just as they reached the kiln the flood washed over them, eating into their legs and pitching them face-first into the corrosive mire.

  Drumark’s fate was already sealed. Tortured and transformed by the sorcerer’s spells, it was a mercy when a stream of flaming jelly consumed him. He was immolated where he crouched before the golden colossus, a living firebrand that was swiftly extinguished.

  The Prismatic King’s own destruction was more prolonged. The glow that emanated from the daemon’s golden avatar changed, becoming a sullen red in hue like the last ember in a dying fire. But instead of fading away, the glow grew rapidly stronger. From the legs it spread up to the waist, across the chest, down arms and wings. The bird-like head was aglow with the volcanic light. Hotter and hotter the light became, feeding upon the aether-gold. Cracks appeared in the daemon’s skin, molten ore spilling from the fissures. The legs began to congeal, evaporating in the fiery swamp of chemicals. Visually the effect was that of watching the daemon sink down into the mire, as though it were being pulled under by some titanic force.

  Still held frozen by the power of its True Name, the Prismatic King vanished into the acidic pool, its physical avatar consumed by the rampaging fury of aether-khemistry. The multi-faceted eyes glared balefully as the head slipped down into the dissolving muck. A soul-searing shriek raged through the smoke-filled refinery, a cry of eternal outrage and defiance that shook the very stones of the mountain.

  The next moment, all that was left of the daemon was a golden slick upon the steaming tide.

  Only one among the Chaos cult remained behind to see the Prismatic King’s dissolution. The deformed sorcerer hovered above the caustic sludge, levitating by means of powerful magics. The feathered growth that bulged from his neck shrieked mournful wails, but the sorcerer simply glared across the destruction at Grokmund. The aether-khemist took a grim delight in seeing the villain’s fury. The cultists had thought to use him to free their daemon. But in the end it had been their hapless pawn who had turned the tide against them and destroyed their evil ambitions.

  Before the sorcerer could collect himself enough to inflict some tormenting spell against him, Grokmund released his grip on the machines. He fell backwards into the chemical mire beneath him. The shock of sinking into the acidic flood was so great that all further sensation of pain was seared from his nerves. He felt nothing as the acids ate him away.

  Gotramm and his crew hurried through the darkened halls. After the malefic luminance cast by the Prismatic King, the tinderlamps they’d left hooked to pillars and walls along their line of march seemed ­feeble. Behind him, Gotramm could hear the screams of the cultists as the toxic gases billowing from the refinery rolled over them. The agonised shrieks goaded the duardin to greater effort. Despite injury and fatigue, every one of them dredged up the energy to quicken his pace.

  It was not until they felt the malignant shriek drawing at the air around them and the profound emptiness that followed it that the duardin knew Grokmund had succeeded. Gotra
mm no longer felt the Prismatic King’s evil presence, his body no longer shivered from a nameless dread.

  ‘Grokmund must have killed it,’ Gotramm gasped as he jogged down the halls. He glanced back the way they had come, saw one of the tinder­lamps flicker out as the chemicals splashed against the pillar it had been set against. The sight urged him onwards, knowing the gases would extinguish him as easily as the lamp.

  ‘Think he made it, cap’n?’ one of the surviving arkanauts asked, desperate hope in his tone.

  Horgarr dashed the warrior’s delusion. ‘Even if he climbed above the tide, he had nowhere to go,’ the endrinmaster stated. ‘The fumes would do for him as surely as the acid. No, there is no escape for Grokmund. And he knew it. He was buying us a chance to get away.’

  ‘And a chance to destroy the daemon,’ Gotramm added. Again he looked back the way they had come. He saw a dark shape rushing towards them ahead of the gas cloud. For a second he delayed, thinking the figure might be a duardin. When he saw the golden mask fitted to the cultist’s face, he aimed his pistol and fired. The shot clipped the human, ripping across his side. The man fell to the floor, wailing as the chemical cloud swept over him a moment later.

  Gotramm holstered the weapon and quickened his pace. He had held his shot because he too had hope. Not that Grokmund would escape, but that Brokrin had. The last time he had seen him, he had been duelling the Chaos warlord. Only the timely interruption of Brokrin and Drumark had granted the duardin the respite they needed to rally against the enemy. But for them, all of them would have been subdued by the Prismatic King’s cult. Destroyed as Thurik had been destroyed.

  There was no chance for Drumark, but Gotramm wanted to believe Brokrin had survived. There was so much he owed to the captain, not least of all his profound apology. Brokrin had been right about every­thing, but the crew had been too blind to see. They had mutinied against a leader who had been trying to keep them all from a voyage without any reward, only the promise of danger and death. Gotramm felt a deep debt to the officer he had rebelled against. His worry was that there was no time left to pay back that debt.