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The Keys to Ruin – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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The Keys to Ruin

David Annandale

I

Daemons were dancing over the Voidfire Plain. The flamers of Tzeentch spun and whirled, their columnar shapes rocking back and forth. Their serpentine limbs outstretched, they bathed the grasses of the Voidfire in their unholy flames, twisting the land, catching it up in their lunatic dance. Wherever he looked, Vrindum saw the daemons. They kept their distance from the Fyreslayers, too scattered and too few to mount a challenge to the great host. They remained writhing silhouettes close to the horizons. The grimwrath berzerker’s grip on Darkbane, his fyrestorm greataxe, was tight with frustrated anger. He longed to cut down the taunting abominations.

Just ahead of Vrindom, Bramnor, youngest of the runesons, rose in the throne on his magmadroth. ‘Face us!’ he shouted at the daemons. ‘You are craven beasts!’ His roar was powerful. The long, roped braid of his beard shook with the force of his shout.

The flamers danced on. They had no need to close with duardin. Mindless, they were caught in the ecstasy of the song, the song that was greater than the daemons, the song that blew with the wind over all the regions and vastness of the Evercry. The song that had called to Beregthor-Grimnir, auric runefather of the Drunbhor lodge. The song Beregthor had answered, leading his warriors down from the mountains, away from the magmahold in Sibilatus, exhorting them to cross the wailing plain.

A choir of a billion voices joined the wind in singing the melody of the dance. The song was simple, repetitive, insistent. It had three notes. Low, high, low. Short, long, short. The beats soft, strong, soft. The voices came from the grasses of the plains. They were tall, waist-high on Vrindum, and flexible, hollow, fleshy, corrupted. Along each shaft, a multitude of toothed mouths chanted. The reeds swayed with the song, bending with and against the wind. When by chance a cluster of reeds leaned together, they burst into eldritch flame. Across the endless stretch of the plain, blossoms of fire shot up into the hard light of the sun. They spread like oil upon water, then went out with the suddenness of candleflame. Fire without cause, out of nowhere, appearing and vanishing.

A tangle of reeds blew against Vrindum’s arm. They grasped at him, mouths gnawing with hunger. He yanked back, uprooting and tearing them. Green ichor spattered. A step later, a cluster formed and spat their fire over him. He growled at the burn. A thousand searing claws crawled over his flesh, seeking to swallow him in metamorphosis. He shrugged away their touch and swung Darkbane like a scythe, cutting a swathe through the reeds. The fire went out.

All along the Drunbhor lines, Fyreslayers fought the ravenous, singing, burning grass. So it had been for days beyond counting.

A flare of violet flame swept over Bramnor. His magmadroth spat its own fire over the grass, killing it with the purging acid. Bramnor snarled as he passed through the daemonic burn. ‘This is not war. I’ve had enough of this cursed land.’

Frethnir, the eldest runeson, said, ‘There is change ahead.’ He pointed.

Vrindum squinted. There was darkness in the distance. A mass of tall forms, much higher than the grasses.

‘Is that a forest?’ The middle brother, Drethor, shaded his eyes.

‘It is not,’ Vrindum said. The shapes, vague as they were this far away, did not belong to trees. He cut through more grasses as they reached for him. Their mouths issued discordant cries, but they fell without burning.

‘Runefather,’ Frethnir called, ‘is that the promise of honest battle we see?’ His tone was jocular, but Vrindum heard an undercurrent of concern. It had been present when Frethnir spoke to his father ever since the departure from Sibilatus, and had become clearer and more urgent during the endless crossing of the Voidfire.

There was no answer from Beregthor.

Instead, there was a cry from further back in the lines. An upheaval of flamer-corrupted grasses wrapped around both legs of a hearthguard berzerker. Blood streamed down his limbs and he fell into a conflagration. He cursed to the last as his flesh burned and his body changed, bones thrusting clacking tongues through muscle, eyes sprouting in his beard, wings unfolding on his back. ‘Brothers!’ he called at the end, and his voice was the only thing that was still duardin about him. His comrades answered his need, and ended his suffering, preserving his honour. Then, in rage, they set about slashing the cursed plain with even greater vigour. In the distance, the flamers danced and paid them no heed.

Another death. They were becoming more frequent. The movements of the land were hypnotic. Mistakes were easier and easier to make with every passing day.

Frethnir had turned around in his throne when he heard the shout. Now he met Vrindum’s gaze. Frethnir’s face was expressive in its pain. His features were thinner and longer than those of his brothers. Even his beard seemed more angular. A great scar ran from Frethnir’s forehead to his chin, earned when he had single-handedly slain two maggoths. Sigils of ur-gold ran along the mark, a sign of Frethnir’s honour and strength. At this moment, though, it seemed to be the division in his spirit. Loyalty and love fought with doubt.

Doubt. Frethnir had spoken it aloud. Bramnor, recoiling from the vast sky over the Voidfire, had been complaining since they reached the plain. Drethor, quieter than the other two runesons, had fallen into a silence he now rarely broke as the days had turned into weeks and supplies had run low. He fought on through the cursed grasses with a stoicism more grim than patient. Frethnir, though, had expressed concern about the quest at the start. He had argued with Beregthor, then accepted the runefather’s decision as final. After so long in the Voidfire, though, the doubts had returned, and grown more serious. They were clearly eating at Frethnir. The lack of answer from Beregthor did not help.

Vrindum moved to the side, hacking through screaming reeds, so he could look past the runesons. Twenty paces ahead, Beregthor rode the magmadroth Krasnak, as high and proud in his throne as he had been the day the fyrds of the Drunbhor had left Sibilatus. Vrindum saw no doubt in the runefather’s posture, and no fatigue. The days in the Voidfire Plain had not worn him down. There was a leader who was sure of the path he had set for his lodge.

Vrindum glanced back at Frethnir. The runeson’s brow was still furrowed, his features still tortured by a decision he did not want to make. He faced forward once more, his posture rigid.

There could only be one choice so agonising. It was between two great loyalties: to the runefather, and to the lodge.

He thinks he might have to challenge the runefather, Vrindum thought.

Vrindum and Beregthor had grown up together. They had fought side by side their entire lives. The idea that the runefather might no longer be fit to bear the name Beregthor-Grimnir was a tragedy Vrindum refused to countenance.

Yet he could not ignore the accumulation of events that had pushed Frethnir to this point. Not just the endless march through the Voidfire Plain. The quest itself was driven by reasons even Vrindum found vague. We seek a gate where the wind is born, the runefather had declared. The lodge of our forefathers calls to us, he had said. A lodge never spoken of before. Beregthor led the Drunbhor toward a myth, to aid another myth. And there was the near-catastrophe at Sibilatus…

He looked again at the bearing of the runefather and felt better. There was a great warrior. He had not fallen, and Vrindum would follow him wherever he led.

But it was hard to look back and no longer see the towering bulk of Sibilatus.

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Legends of the Age of Sigmar: Fyreslayers in Great Britain in 2015.
This eBook edition published in 2018 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Nikolai Georgiev.

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ISBN: 978-1-78030-956-9

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