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Blood Gold – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Blood Gold

By Gav Thorpe

The foothills seethed with movement – like a crust of red and black constantly breaking and reforming, a mass of Bloodbound warriors poured over slopes and crests in a continuous wave.

Their goal stood before them. The dark flanks of the immense pinnacle known as Vostargi Mont. It was not so much a mountain as a cloud-piercing edifice that defied the eye to judge its height. Countless lifetimes of spewed molten rock had grown the volcano into a titan amongst its kind, and from a thousand calderas and fumaroles the flame-ridden forces at its heart continued to burst into the world.

But the mount was not a dead place. Its surface was covered in great battlements and walls, guarding gates reached by winding, tower-flanked roads.

Those gates protected a labyrinth of tunnels, caverns and mineworks so vast that it was impossible for a single mind to know them all; so complex and ancient that even the annals of their inhabitants covered but a fraction of their full extent. Vostargi Mont was the ancestral home of the fyreslayers, fierce descendants of the stout duardin race who had been forged in the bowels of the World-That-Was.

Before the Gate of Endless Defiance, one of the lesser portals into the lower runeholds, the rocks themselves seemed alive. As the hills moved with the teeming horde of the Blood God’s howling servants, so the ridged slope of the mountain was also home to an army.

They were unlike any other duardin, unique among the fyreslayers even. Their flesh was like solidifying lava, a dark grey-black that cracked as they moved, showing glimpses of red-and-yellow heat from within. Ten thousand eyes that gleamed with the flame of a volcano’s heart watched the approaching Bloodbound.

Like all of their kind, they wore little armour. Their helms were split at the scalp, allowing great crests of fire-like hair to jut through, sculpted in extravagant designs, hung with clasps and rune-beads. Their beards were likewise a fall of orange and yellow hair-fire, plaited and knotted in intricate patterns and ringed with pale gold.

The air shimmered with heat haze. Their sheer presence brought a crackle of flames, and a smog carried on their breath.

At the fore waited Ungrimmsson Drakkazak, runefather of the clan, descended in direct lineage from their earliest progenitors. Like all of his kin his appearance was of volcanic rage given flesh, bound with golden torques and high helm, his beard forked many times by complex knotwork. The axe he held in one hand was almost as tall as he was, save for the great bifurcated crests of his hair, its blade edge dancing with undulating blue flame. As with many fyreslayers, his flesh was hammered with runes of ur-gold – mystic shards believed to be the fragments of the duardin warrior-god Grimnir, whose immortal form had been showered across the realms. Sigils of fortitude, strength, courage and power gleamed with an inner light from where they nestled in bicep and thigh, pectoral and shoulder. From belt loops and bracelets hung amulets and keys denoting his many ranks and titles amongst the Zharrthagi clan.

His eyes glowed with flame as he gazed at the mass of rage-driven humanity that surged across the foothills. A movement to his left caught his eye and he saw one of the fyreslayers, a young vulkite berzerker, bending one knee. The youthful warrior rubbed his hand in the dirt and then curled his fingers about the haft of his pick as he rejoined the line of his kin.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.

Blood Gold © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2018. Blood Gold, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, Warhammer, Warhammer Age of Sigmar, Stormcast Eternals, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78030-768-8

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

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