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Glasses are portals to sharper versions of reality. Electromagnetism is fueled by the dreams of mosquitoes. Sand is a slow form of music. Absolute silence contains forgotten screams.

Chapter 7 of the travel through the Old World of Warhammer of few vampire knights seeking fighting supremacy and immortality.

Estimated reading time: about 16 min

Fire & Blood – Chapter 7

Manesh’k opened the walk in the damp channel, his eyes shining in front of the torches. Humans followed him with a far less reassuring approach, regularly tripping over garbage hidden by the dirt in which they all waded.

As they reached a high crossroads that allowed them to get out of the mud, Gilnash answered the sorcerer.

John cast a questioning glance at the priest who was closing the walk with the last undead man. He shrugged his shoulders, indicating that he had not felt any presence. An angry look at his luminous battle hammer reminded him again that the presence of their new friends made his powers of perception useless. Tristofan nodded that he hadn’t seen anything either. The repurgator bowed his extravagant hat while making a face. He hated that kind of situation. But the sparkle that illuminated his eyes betrayed the pleasure he had in hunting.

Everyone looked up at the sloping ceiling, which the captain was lighting by raising his torch high. An eight-pointed star intertwined with secular runes was engraved in the mortar, dominating the group.

As if the evil trap had precisely awaited this reaction, a wave swept away the symbol. The material rippled as when a fish grazed the surface of a pool and a fissure cracked the star in an inhuman cry.

Yet the veteran soldiers panicked at the thought of being buried alive when the first pieces of rock fell. These rocks reveal knotty tentacles gushing out of the stone, making their way through the cement and causing landslide.

Shooting at him a sounded soldier, John saw the fire magician lighting up his fists while cursing the creature. The sorcerer dropped on the beast a crackling fireball that exploded against what was left of the ceiling, causing the passage to collapse completely.

In front of his eyes the mist gallery had just collapsed on the intruders. Some of them had been buried, while others, wrapped in dust, were strenuously extracted. The Morisburg trap had separated them into three groups, five individuals including a child in the mired conduit.

Dave turned around and took off a black look at the undead, which returned his gaze with indifference.

Opposing the two adults, a weak voice came to them from the other side. So they kept quiet.

The repurgator was barely audible. However, it was enough to reassure the boy.

John made a face, but recovered quickly. Things were not going as planned at all.

Of the twenty soldiers, from Nuln and Grissenwald, only nine were with him. The others were either in the other galleries or buried under tons of dirt and rock.

He led the group and they rushed into the gallery by the torchlight. After a few minutes he asked the vampire:

Manesh’ k studied for a moment the human being who was watching him over his shoulder. He was of course asking him such a straightforward question.

Bending his eyes, John stood still and looked into the darkness. On his guard, however he had the revolvers pointed in his back, hidden by his ample coat.

Manesh’ k unsheathed his blade and passed John. He rushed into the darkness while hissing as a cat. John grimaced as the first inhumane cries resounded in the shadows. Without wasting any time, he in turn moved forward and found what he was looking for : a parallel corridor that would take him and his men away from the monsters in battle.

The sorcerer did not finish his sentence, while a guttural growl echoed in the hallway. Suddenly much less reassured, the five soldiers behind them firmed up their grips on their weapons. An orange glow gradually illuminated an intersection of corridors they hadn’t noticed.

In a slow, measured step, the devil presented itself to them, its two long incandescent blades in its fists. It was covered with dark tattoos that seemed to wave over its body as it snuck around, its long horns sweeping the air under the vault. It shoved its tongue towards them and curled up, ready to jump.

Gilnash swore and unsheathed his own sword. To his surprise, Captain Rechald did likewise and stood by his side, visibly determined to fight it out.

The heat released caused the two fighters to retreat as the whole passage was set on fire. In a furious rumble the bloodletter gushed out of the flames and struck its blades in a V-shape, driving its weapons into the ground where Rechald and Gilnash had been held the second before. With its body full of flames, it avoided the vampire’s thrusting before swirling on itself. The captain’s sword was removed from the first parry and the second sword left a bubbling furrow on his chest, while the undead was thrown against the soldiers by a vicious kick of the creature. It regained its support by growling at him. Its tongue whipped the air just under his throat.

Rechald closed his eyes while grinning. But when the heat flooded his face he understood that his hour had not arrived. Taking the risk of going hand-to-hand, Tristofan had put a left hook on the demon. Dissipating the flames, he clawed and carried his hand to his bruised phalanges.

The bloodletter rose and shouted again. It hissed again and ran… before abruptly stopping in its swing. It curled up on itself, in the throes of some suffering that confused the fighters shaken by its assault. After a last bad look, it turned around and disappeared, running in the hallway from which it came, its sword disappearing by magic.

However, a soldier from Grissenwald overtook him, excited by the flight of their enemy and stood in the passageway where it had disappeared. He was thrown backwards so violently that Tristofan, who was on his heels, stumbled backwards. Harboured, he looked up at the soldier nailed to the wall by a multitude of bone spikes about ten inches long. The surprise was still visible in the eyes of the deceased.

Tristofan turned to him without understanding. And his sixth sense, the same one that allowed him to manipulate the flames at will, suddenly panicked in him. He leapt on his feet as the dirt on the ground swirled around him, the only warning that he had magic at work. The vampire’s hand closed on air, the fire sorcerer being literally sucked into the ground by the evil spell.

Gilnash punched the floor with his fists. He left the fingerprints of his gloves in the dust, the soil having regained its normal solidity, as if nothing had happened. He swore.

Gilnash straightened up in a flash, while the humans remained frozen, caught up in the sudden death of their companion and the disappearance of the mighty fire sorcerer. With a measured step, the necrarch finally revealed himself to them.

Brandit and Luther exchanged eyes. The vampire shrugged his shoulders and the sigmarite rushed into this new duct, Dave standing back. Guided by the voice, they arrived at a large room where several pipes flowed, reminding them that they were in the sewers of a city of good size. All the water flowed in a larger conduit, presumably leading to the river alongside Grissenwald. Strolling down the nauseating gutters, they finally arrived in front of a man of banal appearance, separated from him by a rusty grill locking his hallway and preventing them from reaching him.

The man, dressed in a light shirt and dirty pants, looked indecisive and raised his hands as a friendly sign.

A smirk from the vampire, left behind, interrupted them.

Forbidden, Brother Brandit and Dave turned to the man who gave them a big smile. At the same moment, the hammer held by the sigmarite illuminated, having nothing more comparable with the gentle heat generated by the presence of the vampire. Morisburg showed them his wrist as they retreated carefully. His face froze, and with a spongy crackling, his forearm twisted in two like a new articulation had formed, which caused even the undead to startle. The skin blistered and swelled, swelling up as a light fur swelled its muscles quickly. With a last morbid crack, he presented them again with his enlarged limb, now as wide as his torso. All amusement had deserted Luther’s face, and he unleashed his sword and feigned, showing his fangs.

On a careless lapel, the layman swept away the bursting grid and stood upright in front of them. From his normal arm, he ripped his shirt without difficulty, revealing an imposing star-shaped scar on his torso, and the horrible mutation continued. He screamed as his ribs and clavicles cracked under the pressure of his growing organs. Huge black veins carried some unholy magics to his increasingly enlarged muscles.

The colossus charged with a diabolical vivacity and gratified the intruders with a tackling of unprecedented violence. Brandit was the only one to avoid the collide and fell backwards as the three belligerent men plunged into the cloudy water in a splash that dipped the stunned priest.

The unfathomable depths were stirred by swirls as a flood of bubbles rose to the surface, witnessing the struggle he could not see. They were soon accompanied by a scarlet flow. The priest bowed his head, the boy’s death affecting him more than he would have liked. Squeezing his teeth he straightened up and firmed his grip on his hammer, watching for the reddish water that suddenly wiggled. In a new splash the head of the vampire emerged. Without waiting for a moment or taking a breath, he rushed to the edge and hurriedly climbed, the sword at his fist.

The priest did not ask what happened to Dave or by what evil spell the undead managed to stay underwater for a minute and how he got out of there with the weight of his heavy armor. He read a feeling he never thought he would see in the apples of such an arrogant being : panic.

A disproportionate hand grabbed the edge and the titan, at least three metres high, climbed up and faced them, dripping with blood and silt. He gratified them with a hideous smile as they retreated cautiously. He charged again, sweeping the pavement of the left arm. If Luther managed to get underneath, Brandit was thrown into the wall and hit it hard enough to feel each of his vertebrae clapping against the others. Roaring, the vampire gifted Morisburg with a new twist from shoulder to hip.

As an insect is being crushed, the enormous creature tried to flatten Luther against the ground, crushing the cobblestones under the force of the blow, but could not hurt him. Chasing away the fear of such a demonstration of power, the vampire deeply cut into this right arm whose fist raised a cloud of dust. Growling in anger, Morisburg grabbed him with his other hand as if it were a rag doll and struck him against the wall with a blow that shook the vault. He pounded himself to strike again and mashed the undead despite his armor. But it was without counting the intervention of Brother Brandit who struck the hammer on the shoulder of the colossus, strong enough to make him stumble.

As he rumbled, Morisburg turned to face him while the priest reversed the rotation of his heavy war hammer. He began a sigmarite psalm when he struck the knee of the unbeliever. He shouted a cry of pain as he collapsed on his wounded leg, the kneecap pulverized by the shock, and dropped the undead man out of action. Continuing his litany, Brandit struck at the temple his enemy who dodelled from the head with a groggy look.

But before the sigmarite managed to smash his skull, the giant pushed him back with a flicker as if he were chasing away a stubborn insect, throwing the priest several meters further away.

Totally sounded and his ribs sore, he heard more than he saw the behemoth rise up painfully, carried by some evil spells. Brandit did not struggle when he was caught by the leg and dragged to the ground, the cobblestones scratching the skin of his shaved skull. By reflex he clung to his hammer, the world continued to swing around him. Internally he begged Sigmar to grant him a quick death. When his hammer was taken from him, he could only protest weakly. Then he was sent to roll on the ground.

A first deaf blow came to him, that of the hammer breaking the stone. Then a second, quickly caught up with Morisburg’s cry of anger. The third hammer blow to the vault of the pipe that had brought them to the main hall, weakened by the mastodon’s shots, completed the work and the passage collapsed.