by Various
It was easy for Kelmain to say. To one attuned in such a way, the dragon’s ancient intelligence was a palpable presence. It was not just a powerful creature. Its consciousness was a transcendent thing, an order of magnitude above humanity’s frail perceptions. Even the Slight Ones, who claimed companionship with these draconic gods, were like children in comparison.
Lhoigor, focus.
It was an effort to shrug off his fascination, but he took up the intonations where he left off, his thin lips framing impossible syllables. They rose and fell in time with the ancient creature’s slow, pounding heartbeat. Its lids began to drop again, closing over unfocused, reptilian eyes.
Despite its elevated perceptions, the sleeping god’s senses were shut off to the world. Its centuries-long slumber, thus far undisturbed, was a deep, abyssal state of rest.
At the periphery of his focus, Lhoigor sensed his brother’s movements. Kelmain was stalking around the cave, his feet shuffling in the darkness. His pulse quickened as he felt what his twin gripped in his golden-clawed hand.
With fearless bare-skin contact, Kelmain hefted a shard of heaven.
Wyrdstone, the scholars of the Empire named it. It was the stuff of the aethyr, condensed by the mortal world’s laws into a shard of luminous rock. To the men of the civilised south, it was pure corruption, a hazard to be purged and avoided at all costs. To merely be in the presence of the volatile substance invited mutation and madness. From their pulpits, priests and holy men representing a pantheon of southern gods urged their flocks to spurn the afflicted, to scorn those blackened by the Shadow’s touch.
It was the cause of a thousand stillbirths and deformities across humanity’s various kingdoms and nations. A mere flake tossed into a well would doom a whole community. Beastmen and verminkin hoarded it as a rare and precious treasure, the former worshipping it as a gift from the Ruinous Ones, the latter prizing it as currency and a valued food supply.
Kelmain plunged it into the dragon’s scaly flesh.
The sleeping god groaned. It was a sound like the precursor to a volcanic eruption, a rumble of deep tectonic unrest. Lhoigor saw movement beneath its eyelids. Its dreams – whatever gods dreamed – darkened. He smiled as he chanted.
The spell was a simple one, made easier by the presence of wyrdstone. The substance was flaky, and its potency persisted even when it was burned or dissolved in liquid. It mingled with the dragon’s potent blood, and with a soft exertion of his will, Lhoigor began to guide it through the creature’s veins. It invaded arteries like a disease, carrying naturally into the chambers of the beast’s ancient heart.
The effect was unnerving in its immediacy. Mucus began to drool from the dragon’s slitted nostrils, its constitution already beginning to unravel as the taint thrived. The pitch of its heartbeat changed; instinct readied the dragon to fight an enemy that had already won.
Lhoigor’s smile widened, his unnatural teeth showing bright in the cave’s dank gloom.
‘It is working,’ he whispered breathlessly. He turned to his brother, seeing his expression mirrored: two vultures grinning over a carcass. ‘Another. Our work will be done before dusk falls. Skjalandir wakens today.’
Another shard of heaven appeared in Kelmain’s clawed hands, and the sleeping god’s dreams grew darker still.
It was fated to die. This, they realised only after their work was done.
Swollen, corrupted, the dragon thundered from its lair for the first time in an age, no longer the exalted creature it had once been. Its mind was in a clawed grip, squeezed until all that was left was the overriding impulse to defend itself against threats that didn’t exist.
It was a fallen god.
It met the night sky with the promise of annihilation. Its ability to breathe gouts of flame from its fanged maw had been fouled: now acid and bile drooled from between its teeth every time it opened its mouth to scream.
It heaved its bloated bulk into the skies on tattered wings, but it was too heavy to fly. Its form had been warped too much for the fallen god to achieve natural flight for very long. With every beat of its wings, it ravaged its own draconic musculature to stay aloft.
Everything within a mile of the fallen god’s screams cowered. Birds broke their formations, scattering in the frantic need to flee. Nocturnal hunters howled and yelped, gnawing at their own bodies in confusion and fear. A community of humans and dwarfs eking out a grim existence in this relatively secure stretch of the Worlds Edge Mountains awoke to the roaring of a god soon to vent its wrath upon their homes.
The twins did not see. The sense of premonition that seized them stole the nightmarish scene from their sight, replacing it with a whirlwind of unwritten futures, a roiling storm of prophecy.
It was the price they paid for the potency of their visions. Prophecy was like experiencing a seizure, as if it was a curse rather than a gift. This was something they both knew and hated, because it reminded them of lesser seers who needed hallucinogens and incantations for their abilities to function. The injustice of it stung deeply.
But these were thoughts for afterwards, when their muscles ceased trembling and the headaches passed. It was a bitterness that both nurtured in their hours of recovery, and both had entreated their god of claws and feathers to allay the pain.
He only answered with more visions. More agony.
In the vision’s embrace, they saw a god’s death.
And the Slayer.
The dragon dies.
Skjalandir’s killer is a sword. The blade is a yard of ornate steelwork and burning runes, dragon-hilted and vicious. They know without understanding why that it is invested with the purpose of being the nemesis of all dragons, forged in the time when the blood shed between the elder races was still hot.
The blade’s wielder is almost entirely unimportant. Blond-haired and shouting curses, he moves with a ferocity that isn’t his own. His uncharacteristic courage is an expression of the blade’s molten need to enact its purpose. The wielder is an unknowing puppet.
The blade skewers Skjalandir’s brain. It is over as quickly as that. Their plan to ravage the mountain fails. The scheme that would have eventually seen the legendary Slayer Keep powerless beneath Skjalandir’s shadow dies with the stolen bravery of one fool with an enchanted sword.
In a flare of exultant bliss, the blade falls silent, inert now that its task is done.
All of these thing are irrelevant.
Skjalandir’s killer did not come alone. His companions boast a ramshackle bundle of loyalties and allegiances: humans and dwarfs, adventurers and Slayers. The vision compels them to focus on one soul, a dwarfish Slayer who seems not to savour victory’s taste as the others do.
Brother, look...
I know, Lhoigor. I see it.
Look at his axe.
I know. I see.
The course they had charted so many years ago became a quaint irrelevancy.
The vision left them as they always did, but the revelation of what they had seen made their post-prophecy pains seem a small thing.
‘The scope of this is troubling,’ Lhoigor observed. His words came with a small burble of blood where his needle teeth had pierced gum.
‘At times, you wildly exaggerate, Lhoigor, but you irritate me far more when you understate things.’
Kelmain was a master of his own emotions, and peerless at masking his fears and insecurities with arrogance and false confidence. Lhoigor looked away to cover a smile at his brother’s blunder. He spoke. He actually used his voice.
‘I will be rational for both of us, then. Where do we stand?’
Kelmain took a calming breath, marshalling his willpower.
We will return to Daemonclaw as if nothing has happened. We say nothing of the dragon, and nothing of the fools who are fated to kill it. I will never admit failure to him. His petty little horde will have its siege.
‘And the dwarf?’
Kelmain glanced over the valley. From their vantage at the cave mouth, the mount
ain offered a wide view of the surrounding terrain. They heard the thunder of Skjalandir’s distant rampage. As the twins talked, they saw the dragon plunge from the air, his fire a tiny gout of malevolence in the darkness. In that moment, a dozen souls perished.
Daemonclaw is beyond foolish, but he is... blessed. Slightly. Enough for him to be of use to us. He will not be blind to the dwarf’s presence. He will at least suspect what he represents.
‘But Praag is long distant from here. You think the dwarf will be present for the siege?’
Lhoigor, came Kelmain’s admonishment. Equilibrium was restored. Stop being such a fool. Think. We were showed this dwarf for a reason. He possesses rare significance. He will have a part to play in the razing of Praag.
‘And what part would that be?’
Kelmain’s lips twisted into a rare grin. His hoarse voice was rich with vicious amusement.
‘I think he is going to kill Daemonclaw.’
III
Daemonclaw.
Warlord. Champion of the Changer. A master of swordsmanship, a fiercely competent sorcerer. Uniter: a warrior of Tchar who held together the warring slaves of gods that despised each other.
And, the brothers knew, born a pampered lordling of the Empire he was destined to conquer.
They knew the warlord better than he knew himself. They knew his birth name, and they knew the petty viciousness that led him to swear his soul to the Changer. The childish need to murder his political rivals with clever poisons exposed him to a minor conjurer. This was what set him on Tchar’s path, and took him far north of his birthland.
He was... competent. This, the brothers also knew. It was a tale repeated a thousand times across the bloody history of the north. Followers flocked to this fledgling warlord, won through cunning and force. He visited the ancient shrines, spattered the ritual circles with the blood of his conquests, and slowly, over the long years, Tchar took notice.
The god of claws and feathers extended his taloned hand, and thus Arek Daemonclaw was born.
Much was owed to the brothers, of course. He would have failed early on, had Kelmain and Lhoigor not seen that burning ember of potential. Their counsel secured his victories. Their warnings saved his armies. Their formidable power parted oceans in the depths of the Wastes that his forces might cross unhindered, and their prophetic gifts interpreted the Changer’s shifting whims. All for Daemonclaw. All in the name of an Empire in ruins.
The warlord was theirs. They owned this creature.
And now, on the eve of a city’s destruction, on the very precipice of his army’s first victory, their pet was showing... resentment.
Rebellion, even.
The warlord railed against their warnings. ‘Cross the Lynsk in winter,’ the brothers counselled. ‘Your warriors are no stranger to marching through the snows.’
Oh, how he had flown into a rage, then. He claimed that to wait was idiocy. They would not expect an invasion at the height of summer. It was the pampered lordling who spoke that day, impatient for blood.
They did not contradict him. They did not even act against him. But the brothers began to wonder. Had they made the correct choice? Was this truly the man who would usher in the Time of Changes?
His army was vast. It was a patchwork coalition of tribes and warbands, over a hundred thousand damned souls hungry to tear down a city’s walls. It spoke of the power that Daemonclaw wielded that a champion of the Changer could win over servants of other, rival powers.
It seemed right. It seemed like this was... it.
Summer was a poor season to begin this war. The Empire and its ancestral dwarfish allies could respond hastily without the snows stunting their movements. That was something that could not be allowed to happen. That was why the brothers awakened Skjalandir, to cripple the Slayer Keep, denying the Empire reinforcements.
But that plan had failed. And now this Slayer had been revealed to them. What next, then? What did he represent?
It was prudent, the brothers decided, to be adaptable. Fluid. History would be made here.
They doubted Daemonclaw would be the one writing it.
The warlord was afraid.
To his credit, he was a master of veiling his deeper emotions. A trait that Kelmain could respect, even if he wasn’t fooled.
Arek Daemonclaw was a titan. He moved with physical arrogance and a striding gait, unhindered by the blessed plate armour that had painfully fused to his living flesh.
The brothers had inscribed the runes adorning it personally, a glowing screed of warding text – fire’s harsh illumination against the black of iron plate – deflecting harm back at anyone dimwitted enough to confront him. Even as he strode into their tent, demanding they offer him a vision, he was almost unkillable by virtue of their efforts.
Daemonclaw reached down, his armour creaking softly, to move the pieces of the chessboard. It ended the game in a victory for the white player.
The brothers glanced up at him, identical, vicious smiles written across their pale faces.
‘Why do you always do that?’ Khelmain asked.
‘I fail to understand why you play each other at all.’ The warlord’s voice was a rumble of petulant syllables. It teased through the visor of his expressionless war helm.
‘One day we hope to establish which of us is the better player,’ came Lhoigor’s answer.
My, his feathers are ruffled. I wonder what ails him.
Perhaps he has seen a certain Slayer sally forth from the walls, no? The voiceless communication was ripe with amusement. Their smiles widened.
‘How many games have you played now?
‘Close on ten thousand.’
‘What is the score?’
‘Kelmain’s victory, which you foresaw, puts him one ahead.’
There was a pause. The warlord looked off into the darkness of the tent, his sapphire eyes glancing over the scattered miscellanea that made up the brothers’ worldly possessions. Outside, the walls of Praag held against a massed charge of beastmen. Their braying death agonies drifted into the tent.
Breath of the Changer, he chafes at confessing his fears. This is glorious.
‘You did not come here to discuss our chess playing, fascinating as it doubtless is,’ Lhoigor prompted.
‘What do you require of us?’
‘What I always do: information, prophecy, knowledge.’
‘Tchar has granted us a great deal of the latter,’ Lhoigor sighed with mock wistfulness.
‘Sometimes too much, I think,’ Kelmain observed.
After several hesitant moments, the warlord shook his armoured head, and ploughed into what Kelmain and Lhoigor had already known for several weeks.
Daemonclaw did indeed glimpse the Slayer.
The dwarf was a machine. A murderous engine.
How he came to be in Praag, the brothers didn’t know, but that was an irrelevance. The city was a convergence of a hundred thousand fates. Tchar had placed the son of Grimnir here for some bleak purpose. Almost certainly to thwart Daemonclaw.
The warlord explained that the Slayer had emerged from the city walls like wrath’s very avatar. He was like a force of nature. Every movement caused something to die. Stinking, bestial corpses were piled high by the time the Slayer withdrew.
It was, the warlord explained, his weapon that caused him a moment’s... unease. A trifling matter. A point of simple curiosity.
‘Your forebodings are doubtless justified,’ Kelmain’s tone was sage. Patient.
‘Sometimes Lord Tchar chooses to send warnings in just this manner.’
Oh, he does indeed.
‘I require more information than this,’ the warlord growled. The sound was a deep thrum of aggression. He wasn’t blind to the brothers’ amusement.
‘Of course.’
‘You wish to learn more of this axe and its bearer.’
‘Naturally.’
‘You wish us to invoke the name of the Changer and ask him to grant you the boon of a vision.’
The brothers moved in synchronicity, the temperature dropping with the gathering of sorcerous energies. Daemonclaw took a step back, his plated boot clunking loudly against a tent pole dug into the earth. He envied and feared what they were capable of.
The boon of a vision indeed, Arek. I pray you find this to your taste, my lord.
‘Look, my lord. Let the Changer reveal all things.’
And reveal, he did.
A dwarf at the forge.
The blow of a hammer against heated starmetal throws up a flare of eye-aching sparks.
The anvil is a work of ancient genius. Dwarf artisanry cages and tames the winds of magic, imbuing it with the qualities that the runesmith requires. An axe takes shape on the iron surface, the metal hammered into a lethal smile.
The weight of ancient prehistory is a musky scent in the air, mingling with the dwarf’s sour sweat. He hammers, and hammers, and hammers, until...
A battle.
A dwarf ripples with spiralling tattoos, the play of ink over iron-hard muscles giving them motion of their own. The blood that spatters him is foul and black, the stink of it overpowering every other sense.
He bears an axe. The axe, alongside its twin, gripped in clenched fists. He wields them like he was born for this. As if this is his very purpose.
The first great incursion, the warlord hears Kelmain’s whispered voice.
At the very beginning, Lhoigor affirms. There is awe in their voices. Longing.
The dwarf is a leader of armies. The numbers... the scale... The warlord has seen nothing like this before. Soldiers without end. Violence without restraint. The sky roils in apocalyptic motion, and a million souls wage war for a world that is already doomed.
The warlord sees the dwarf’s insane decision. He sees him marching off into the heaving north, to deny the hordes their prize of his beloved mountains.
He sees the axe, cast away, before he strides into his final battle.
The axe is found.
Karag Dum. The lost northern hold. The vision shows walls unblackened by time’s ravages, and towers manned by bearded warriors. They fight for their souls.
The Wastes are young here, but the malignant energies expand their cancerous influence. Daemons walk the earth freely, and hurl themselves at the stone fortifications. The defenders are beleaguered. Flagging. Morale is nothing more than a grim need for survival.
