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The multiplication tables were originally written in Latin verse. Pens have souls. That’s why they sometimes leak in your pocket. If you hold an onion upside down during a full moon, you can see the past. Clocks run clockwise because ancient clockmakers were frustrated left-handed.

Chapter 1 of the travel through the Old World of Warhammer of few vampire knights seeking fighting supremacy and immortality.

Fire & Blood – Chapter 1

The wagon was moving calmly along the river. The team was not in a hurry to get the passengers talking to each other. Two young men stood in the front of the car, keeping an eye on the monotonous road. In the shadow of the tarpaulin at the back, an older, thicker man kept passing a rag over his gun with his heels touching the dust. After a while, he lifted her up above his head and gazed at her in a ray of light. The mighty war hammer sparkled. Satisfied, the man in bure delicately put it inside, at the feet of a fourth man. He looked at her with great respect, before turning to the blue sky at the end of the afternoon.

Snoring was coming up from under the fourth man’s imposing hat. Despite the fine weather of late autumn, he had kept his ample coat, his arms crossed, disappearing inside. The jolt of a bad stone shook the hammer which touched his thick studded boots. Crystalline tinnitus erupted from the crates on either side of the sleeper.

Raising his head, the bald priest gave him back his smile. Few things could pull John Grenaille out of his sleep. Few things have been omitted from its obligations, as both of them had already noted on numerous occasions. Rare were the men who had practiced his profession so long and so enthusiastically. John had been a repudiator since he was nine years old.

The first one laughed and approved. John had animated one of the city’s largest inns until after sunrise, seemingly tireless, always dancing, courting or singing. And yet he had achieved the impossible the day before. Without the man in the adventurer’s hat, the twenty or so people in the procession would have perished in the sewers of the city. He was the one who had killed the master mutator, the abominations puffed up suddenly destabilized by the disappearance of their pack leader. The vermin would still have been a real scourge for merchants for a long time, piercing their cellars and seizing their possessions as well as their servants…

Tristofan Tisseron wore a white and gold tabard, embroidered with scarlet flames attesting to his status. He was a magus of fire. His beard, constantly brownish, contrasted with the thick red hair that grew in disorder on his skull and sparkling green eyes. Her bare arms were covered with freckles, whose skin stuck to her muscles revealed her regular excess in magic manipulation. Nevertheless, he advanced vigorously among the soldiers, holding his stick firmly and firmly.

They had now been warned of increasing disappearances in the city of Grissenwald two days ago. They immediately set off, flanked by Dave and Leon, the two apprentices of the repurgator, and accompanied by Brother Brandit. To them five they had already carried out more than fifteen interventions through the empire, relentlessly tracking down the servants of ruin, the Skavens or any other vermin.

A little less than twenty soldiers followed, with their metal armour rattling as they walked. They had heard about their problems with the solved skavens at the same time as the Grissenwald incident group. They were delighted to learn that John had decided to visit the scene of the incident. But surprised that he told them that if the soldiers wanted his help, they would have to move at his own pace, which means at the speed of a mule. Preferring to count on his support, Corporal Rechald had given up their mounts. At least they didn’t carry the majority of their food and sleeping accommodations, which were currently used as mattresses and pillows.

With her eyes soaked in tears, she begged the individual to let her go. Her long, brown hair was glued to her cheeks and her naked body by croupy water. She suffocated for a moment. Her gag prevented her from stirring her jaw completely.

Lying on the cold ground, she could only contemplate the other three women slowly bleeding to death. A bloody furrow was traced on each of their throats, yet they were still alive. The trachea and esophagus had not been severed. Nevertheless, they remained immobile, paralyzed by magic. She saw the creature leaning towards the nearest one, observing it carefully. He totally ignored the naked, slender body dripping with hemoglobin, and stretched a emaciated finger towards the bloody cut.

The fourth woman shouted a stifled cry as he slipped his finger into the wound of his immobile victim, the skin waving as he stroked the inside of the flesh. Slowly he took it off and carried it to his lips. For a moment he seemed to study her taste like a winegrower of a great vintage, the vague glance. Slowly, a smile stretched over his light grey face, revealing his yellowish, prominent canines. Slowly he leaned over the poor woman whose gag had been removed. His crackled lips rested on those, red and fleshy, of the throat.

She was a witness despite herself of this long kiss in the light of the torches. The fluids of the first three victims flowed on their kneeling bodies, criss-crossing between their breasts and dripping from their thighs in furrows dug into the stone. These formed a perfect circle in which the dark liquid flowed, before going into a central basin where it gradually accumulated. A crackling sound made the woman startle, fascinated by this morbid kiss. A horror thrill roamed her as she watched the creature straighten up. The woman turned forward, her gaze stuck in the survivor’s eye while her paralyzed jaw remained wide open. A new flood of blood flowed through her thick broth as she tried to loosen her ties, screaming in spite of her gag.

He swallowed his victim’s severed tongue by turning to the last woman still screaming. A big smile spread over his red smudged face.

She still held the seal of water with which she had awakened the other brunette in her hand. Carefully tracking every move of the vampire, she leaned her head aside, calculating. How she admired the grace with which he manipulated the emotions of each of them.

Castille herself had coated the dagger of her master with paralytic poison. She knew her effects perfectly well. The other three women were fully aware of what they were going through. Better still, she felt with increased perception every sound, every caress and every dash of pain. And yet, the substance forbade them from moving. They were no longer even able to blink eyelids to moisturize the apples in their eyes. Each had an open throat from which an irregular stream of hemoglobin came out, ejected by the painstaking beating of their hearts.

At his side, Morisburg was fascinated. The envy was so powerful in his eyes that he could have illuminated the room. Entirely dressed in black cloth, his outfit contrasted with his neighbour’s light white dress, whose bare feet were stained with clay. Where she was excited, the fabric bounced over her knees, he was totally motionless. As if he had cut himself on the dagger of Master Scleras. Dagger that drew a new scarlet line in a muffled cry.

Next to him, Dave wrote down every word on a notebook, his hand constantly moving.

The man had a heart that did not escape the eye of the apprentice.

It was as if the devil had taken his daughter away, he whispered quickly as he pressed his thumb against his forehead. I’ve never seen anyone with a face like that before, and yet I’ve seen some pretty good weirdos in twenty years in this hostel. But I’ll tell you myself, he added, leaning towards a conspiratorial air. I’ll tell you who killed him. It’s not that hard to make wine. Old Baster… he’s scared to death. Something that scared him so much that his heart gave out…

The two boys exchanged an anxious gaze. His testimony concurred with that of a woman at the wash-house at the entrance to the city and a baker three alleyways further on, which was not reassuring…

The man sighed. The repurgator had come to interrupt him at his post in the middle of dinner, posing a red mullet in his place. “You’re from here,” he argued. And he said that he was probably safer at his side than alone at the end of the bridge or in a prostitute’s diaper. John came in and lifted his torch to inspect the room.

He kept quiet by quickly sweeping the room. There was nothing left to get out of this place.

They went upstairs. Just as in the lobby, he did not dwell on the beds or chests of drawers that too many people had obviously moved. On the other hand, he inspected the doors at length.

Simon leaned forward and examined the glass that John had pointed to him. There was a wedge on the ledge so that the window did not open violently during draughts and could break. He gazed at his reflection in the torchlight for a few seconds before turning to the repellent.

John sighed and pointed his index finger at a specific point on the tile.

He gave him a few seconds to examine it more closely. The soldier finally noticed that a more translucent circle was visible on the glass.

John wiped the window with his sleeve.

He stopped when the repellent removed his arm. The circle was still visible. Simon frowned. John carefully opened the window. The door opened inwards, and then jammed at an angle close to 45° with the wall, blocked by the wedge. He remained impassive and had to stretch out his arm to be able to touch the dirt on the glass at the same level as the clean circle.

Performing, John leaned over. They were almost four metres high and the wall was virgin plaster.

A torch appeared beneath them. Its brightness was reflected on the priest’s smooth skull and the head of his heavy hammer, hanging on his back.

They quickly joined him, the priest inspecting the grass arriving at half calves.

He raised his free hand and showed them his find. The soldier blurred as John’s eyelids were strangled. These were three human phalanges.

On the eastward bank four silhouettes stood up, observing from afar the gleams of the sleepy city. Three of them had thick armour with dull reflections under the moon. The fourth one had him only a leather cuirasse. Sheaths hung from the belts of each of them. The glowing light of their eyes pierced the semi-darkness.