Skrittar sighed and brought his staff up to bash the deranged brains from Manglrr’s skull. The warlord’s senile panic was threatening to upset the stormvermin. More importantly, it was interfering with the seerlord’s display of divine favour and tactical acumen! It was a sorry thing to see a Lord of Decay reduced to such a simpering state — he’d have to remember to have everyone who’d seen the spectacle killed.
Before he could deliver the killing blow, however, a loathsome stink swept through Skrittar’s nose. It was a rotten, sour smell, decayed meat mixed with reptilian musk. At once, he realised this was the smell that had reduced Manglrr to a cowering flea, but where such a scent could come from, he was at a loss to explain.
Then, with a feeling of dread, Skrittar lifted his head and stared up at the sky. No skaven liked the open sky, that vast emptiness that was so strange and alien beside the cramped comfort of their burrows and tunnels. He was unusual among his race in his tolerance for it, yet in this instant he shared their terror of the heavens more fully than he would have believed possible, primitive instincts racing through his veins and sending a wave of fear through his entire body.
There was something descending from the sky. Something vast and unspeakable! It stank of death and putrefaction, of dried scales and shrivelled flesh. There was no mistaking that awful shape, the powerful pinions and mighty claws, the barbed tail and armoured body of a dragon. No head graced its stumpy neck, however, only a ragged hole and the gleaming tip of exposed spine!
As he watched, the deathly dragon swooped down upon one of the Mordkin formations. From the jagged stump of neck a boiling torrent of rotten meat and writhing maggots showered down upon the massed grave-rats, searing them in their bony armour. Then the dragon’s claws were scything into them, tearing skaven apart like some gigantic hell-cat!
Perched upon the dragon’s shoulders, looking like some black tick embedded in its decayed hide, a wizened figure stood and gestured with a skeletal staff. Sorcerous energy crackled about the head of the staff, expelling itself in a stream of wailing darkness. The malefic magic gouged into a regiment of Fester’s clanrats, withering dozens into mummified husks in the blink of an eye.
Skrittar’s lips peeled back from his fangs as he watched the mage-man attack. He would not stand for this. He would not suffer this filthy meat to cheat him of his triumph. Whatever his powers, the creature was still merely human, insignificant beside the austere might of a race crafted by the godliest of gods!
The seerlord popped a small sliver of warpstone into his mouth, feeling its power rush through him as his fangs ground it into dust. Flush with the grandeur of his enhanced prowess, he sent a green bolt of destruction searing down into the stormvermin massed about his altar, cooking one hapless warrior where he stood. ‘The Horned Rat will suffer no coward-meat!’ Skrittar roared, scurrying across the altar from side to side to ensure the whole regiment was aware of his anger. Certain of their terrified attention, he leaped onto the stone arch and scrambled up to the top of the bell.
‘Scurry-hurry!’ Skrittar shouted, pointing forwards with his staff. ‘I shall kill-slay the mage-meat!’ he proclaimed, evoking cheers from the stormvermin. ‘You will gloriously slay-kill the dragon!’
In the dead silence that greeted that pronouncement, it was easy for Skrittar to hear the cowards who tried to break ranks. Burning them to a cinder restored the enthusiasm of the survivors.
Verminous flesh shrivelled into dust as Lothar von Diehl stretched forth his hand. He exulted in the power that flowed through him, felt a sense of rapture as he watched ratmen crumble before him. Never before had he imagined such power! All his conjurations, the magic he had learned and practised in secret all those years, they were nothing beside this.
Beneath him, he felt the ancient majesty of Graug the Terrible — a primal force of almost elemental fury revivified as nothing more than a puppet, an extension of some small fragment of the necromancer’s will. At his merest whim, the zombified beast would lash out with its claw and extinguish a dozen lives or bring withering death to scores with a blast of corrupt gases and wormy meat. Spears and swords crumpled against the wyrm’s armoured hide, and those few that did pierce became lodged in rotten, unfeeling flesh. Hundreds of monstrous creatures swarmed about the dragon, yet they were as helpless and puny as ants.
This, Lothar imagined, must be how Vanhal felt. The raw power of annihilation coursing through his mind and soul, waiting there just beneath the surface, lurking unseen and unguessed until it was called upon. No wonder the necromancer was so contemptuous of conquest and dominance. Truly, what was the power of an Emperor beside that of a living god?
Lothar reached out with his hand, plucking a squirming ratman from the horde arrayed around him. Coldly, he sent tendrils of necromantic energy slashing at the creature, stripping its fur away in ribbons, leaving wet bones glistening in the starlight. He could feel every inch of the creature as death spread through its mangled frame, savouring it as he once might have savoured a Mootland delicacy.
That a low-born peasant such as Vanhal should unlock this miraculous potential within him was something that no longer stung Lothar’s pride. It was enough that the potential had been unlocked. Glutted on the power flowing through him, the baron hadn’t even felt slighted when Vanhal relinquished control of Graug to him and dispatched him to confront the skaven. Anything that would maintain this power, any impudence or insult was of no consequence. Nothing mattered, nothing except this power!
The baron felt his skin wither against his bones. Flesh, he thought with contempt. Such a poor vessel to clothe the indomitable will of a soul such as his. The flame of mortality was too weak a candle to illuminate the great secret. He could see it now, as he sent phantom energies searing into the ratmen, each death fitting another piece into the cosmic puzzle. All he must do was extend his power a little further, commit those last reserves that sustained him, and he would see it all!
A blast of aethyric malignance slammed into Lothar von Diehl, causing the magical shield he had woven about himself to flicker. The impact sent blood flowing from his ears, nearly pitching him from Graug’s mighty shoulders. Dazed, the necromancer shook his head. The reckless, drunken excess of a moment before evaporated as logic subsumed emotion within his mind. Horror flowed through him as he appreciated where his power-crazed desire had nearly led him. Flesh might be a poor vehicle for such power, but it was the only one he had.
Another lash of green lightning smacked into Lothar’s defences. He spun around, focusing his attention on draining off the malevolent energies. To his witchsight, the lightning left behind it a glowing ribbon of magic, a trajectory he followed back to its source. What he saw was a blazing bubble of deranged energies, a confusion of aethyric vibrations banded and bound by a crazed medley of strange sigils and bizarre runes. At the centre of that energy was a ramshackle altar mounted on a wheeled platform. A great bell stood above the altar, its clapper shining like a knot of concentrated magic. Above the bell, a horned ratman capered and gestured, energies whipping about it as it snarled and chittered.
Lothar sneered as he saw the skaven sorcerer. He was indebted to the monster for breaking him from his trance. Now he would reward the filthy brute with a quick death. Extending a fraction of his power, he willed Graug into the air, the dragon’s tattered pinions smashing low scores of ratmen as it took wing. The dragon’s headless bulk soared above the battlefield, hurtling with meteoric fury towards the enemy warlock.