The Walking Storm
Why?
It's a fair question for me, I suppose. Could it be my ego, wanting to assert myself after Fjolla made that ring? Some attempt to meet Master Snorri's standards? That king Gloin had called for warriors, and the High King too? A plain and simple desire for revenge, to strike out Grudges? Some desire to test myself and gain glory?
I can't deny some of that might be working in me. I won't insult your intelligence that way.
But I can say, if you asked me, in the darkest nights, and in the brightest day, and in the gray twilight in between, as I cleared my schedule and told Klorah I'd be going west with the campaign,
why, I'd only have one consistent answer, for better or for worse. One thing that kept coming to my thoughts, even when my pride was most checked and my ego quiescent, even in the times when my mind was clearest and unfogged by anxieties or rages or deepest, unending loathing.
My children were going.
Now, I'm not really a fighter. I've gone on campaign before, of course, who couldn't in this world corrupted by evil, but I usually prefer to stay home and make good work for the Brana and mark my presence on the field that way. But with Bardin and Solveg,
at least, going to fight those monsters, well.
There's not a chance I'm going to let them fight alone.
Not my daughter. Not my son.
But equally, there's not a chance I'm going to march unprepared and unready. I'll not die a fool's death, rushing into battle unprepared or underprepared.
I'm a Master Runesmith, with clients among the Brana and the reagents they provide as payment; never mind my own education under Master Snorri, a living legend who lives up to the legend. So as I examined the gear I've made over the years, of course, it's all still
to par, if a bit underwhelming: but then, it was what I made in my spare time in case of the worst possibility. As I said, it's rare for me to campaign; but this, this is a worthy cause indeed.
A simple set of Gromril scale and a horned helmet, designed to offer as much protection as possible while also remaining light enough to move in. A simple cloak of troll leather dyed a vibrant silver and gold. A belt, made of soft fur and lined with three silver plates, made by my wife and Runed by my own hand. A ring, much the same. Runes to emphasize protection in all things, first and foremost, armor against bolt and blade and bewitchment.
But most of all, my ax, my weapon, my foe-slayer. The construction is...
adequate. The Rune of Cleaving, the Rune of Fury, the Rune of Speed. Simple stuff. The weapon itself is a head of Gromril, carved into a single-bit ax-head, fit on stained wutroth, lightly decorated with the images of angry Longbeards bellowing their rage at the enemy. Tested during the Great Incursion, a slayer of Dragon Ogres and of Daemons alike. Blood coated and it soaked it, many foemen slain by haft and edge and back alike for in my time I have used the whole of it, as a cudgle if nothing else.
it's not enough.
Not for the fighting I'm about to plunge into.
That's the biggest weakness I would have, that ax. I could trust Fjolla, with her ring, to handle magic; Master Snorri, if he comes along, can quite simply rend apart entire regiments, entire cities, if need be; but what of the mighty? Champions who can endure
his storm, who don't wield magic in that way? A weakness, a gap in my panoply. No shame to Master Snorri, but that he still bares Old Reliable when he could do so much better is a continual mark of confusion to me.
It's time to fill the gap. Besides, I could hardly look bad in front of my children, now could I?
So I immediately grabbed a roll of parchment and started to sketch, even as I thought about the resources I could bring to bear. The Runes I could mark it with. How it ought to be made, both mystically and physically.
My mind immediately turned to the Dragon Ogre Shaggoth's Heart held within my hoard, trapped within Runes of stasis, of preservation, and so still as fresh now as it was decades ago, when it had driven muscle and sinew and power. One of those abominations, a leader if far from cursed Kholek's potency, attempting to bully a band of Beastmen into following him so he could attack Kraka Drak. Vengeance for Kholek, vengeance for a father.
If he would waste his life on it, let him join his father in the blackest pit.
The Brana had scented it, the gathering force of darkness, smelled the wickedness growing as cancer and brought down their storm on it, slaying Shamans and Gorebulls and Abominations in equal measure in a flurry of ice and lightning and cutting winds. They were death from on high, as certain as a cave-in and as deadly a gas leak.
Hm. I noted that down on the parchment as I continued to sketch, drawing out the mighty ax, the shaft, the blade.
A duel between one of the Brana's champions, a descendant of the King of the Skies by the name of Golden Oath, and the Shaggoth had seen it slain. He had been vigorous, that Shaggoth, and mighty and had taken much killing: blood and horn and skull and bone was pulped, ruined, destroyed by the end, rended and cleaved and cut by sharp claws and hard paws and a wicked curved beak. Nearly everything in fact, ripped and torn to shread not helped by the armor the thing wore being thick and strong, the collar of some Daemon god. In the end it had been all too similar to nothing other than base wrestling, like surly beardlings out from their mothers' eyes for the first time.
Except, of course, that both Griffon and Shaggoth could have picked me up and tossed me like a ball if they were inclined, an experience I was not inclined to join Master Snorri in experiencing.
But for all the Shaggoth's armor was effective if both ugly and corrupt, it did not prove finer than the Armor I proffered to Golden Oath for the deed as they set out hunting, bane of Chaos one and all, in one form or another. The Master Rune of Grimnir, the Rune of Obligation, the Rune of Confrontation: A thing
fit to slay Chaos. Slightly singular in purpose...but I've always believed the client has final call, and the client really,
truly, loathed Chaos.
Understandable enough, really.
So after a battle that saw a good chunk of the forest turned to splinters, in the end Golden Oath managed to put a tree trunk through the armor, a good tactic indeed as I understand the matter. For this I gained the heart, a wretched, pumping, mighty thing that had pumped mighty blood and devoured greedily of the storm and now mighty pump it greedily once again.
A fit reagent for a fit Rune.
The Rune of Lightning, perhaps? Or the Rune of Chain Lightning. A tiny of part of me was almost inclined to the Rune of Fury, though I put that aside for the moment to keep sketching out potential arrays. I knew what I wanted, I saw it.
I let my mind go over the Reagents in my hoard, stretching back and back and back, some of them from all the way back to my days as a Journeyman, breaking every bone in my body.
My mind in particular went back to a treasure I'd been lucky enough to claim: A single feather of the most antediluvian of Great Eagles, during the Great Incursion. It was back, in fact, during the cleanup after the Great Incursion that I would claim it. One of the Bray Shamans would have the thing in its pack, a twisted trophy, a cruel jape. He'd been repelled from the walls, survived, and made a living raiding travelers and Otrek, Otrek had dispatched me and some Rangers to kill him and his tribe to the last to avenge the Grudges. I believe Master Snorri was still recovering from his fight with Kholek, perhaps why he never heard about it, if he hasn't anyway.
We found him in a slowly degenerating bit of forest, not yet fallen but close, so close, on the precipice. I was young and naive then, but I understood soon enough that there was daemonic energy gathering, perhaps months from more summoning, and I refused to accept that.
He was...he was riddled with tattoos that burned my eyes to look at, the shaman that is, that flowed and danced and seemed to invite, as is the way of Slaanesh. Script, unholy, which made my eyes water to look at traveled up and down his bare body, muscled, lean, graceful and quick. His robes, I did not realize that they could craft that well for there was beauty
wasted in that moment and in a second I understood the real crime of
corruption, of the stuff of Chaos. But then I realized he had a staff, and I didn't give a damn, for that staff of the finest of wood was topped with a skull. A dwarf's skull.
A Runesmith's skull. The symbol of the Guild crudely carved into the bone and then filled in with silver.
Mockery? Warning? It didn't matter. All I knew is that I wanted it destroyed, unmade, rendered into nothingness but ash and a bad memory to be cleansed with copious ale.
I don't know...much about Master Snorri's past, before he journeyed to Kraka Drak. It's never seemed right to pry, and he's not spoken about it much. But there are whispers, about what he did to the Broken Band. I know more about Karag Dum, including breaking the Gate like a twig.
If half of what is said is true, I think I understand a little, thinking back to when I saw that accursed, wretched, unholy, never should have been thing. When I understood the sheer depravity, the absurd waste of a life, the disregard for common
decency, for the intrinsic value of a thinking mind, I saw Grimnir's red.
Perhaps you think we fought them in battle? No such luck. Too much risk for not enough reward, particularly when there were better ways. Poison supplies were low, and so we drugged their alcohol instead; they were asleep, the lot of them.
We slunk into the camp, and as they slept, we butchered them with as much mercy as they had ever shown to anyone else, to the last. I
personally took the Great Bray-Shaman's head from the rest of his body, to make sure he was dead. And I took the Great Eagle Feather, to remember,
forever to remember. And I personally destroyed the staff.
It's only appropriate, perhaps, considering what I intend to do now, to use it on this. And I know exactly the Rune to use it for.
And again, perhaps only appropriately, I considered the last reagent from my hoard even as I continued to sketch.
The Brana don't have quite the same beliefs regarding dead bodies as we do. Oh, to be sure, besmirching one is still a good way to enrage and threaten them, if nothing else they can grasp that it's meant to be a serious insult and a threat even if they don't personally care and they take as well to attempted threats and insults as a Dwarf to raw magic: screaming, fists thrown, and everything lit on fire by the end. And of course there's the simple fact that Brana are still griffons and therefore could be used as reagents and have their bodies stolen that way. Some burn the dead to keep them from being insulted, others dispose of them in hidden dark places, some have simply taken to creating mausoleums in the style of the Dwarfs. They're a considerably more varying people, the Brana, for all the King of the Skies has enforced a relatively consistent code of conduct.
They are also
deeply practical about the matter, as I've said before.
So some--
Not many, the Brana have picked up some of our own distaste about the matter, but some--to cut out the middle man have begun donating their bodies to Runesmiths or their own craftsmen to ensure that at least whatever gets made serves their kin and their aerie after death. And what Runesmith do they trust more than He Who Girds the Many, the Branawongr? Who better to turn this to a productive end (and to be sure, I
did tell them exactly what I had planned, they knew it was to be a personal weapon).
I say "it was in my Hoard" but keeping a Brana brain around would be...ghoulish and weird, neither adjectives I want applied to me. For my own sense of decorum and good taste I instead asked from among those donations if there was one I could use, one from an Elder, a mighty Brana indeed. An old Stormcaller's, wreathed in cold and lightning and magic, was granted to me as a boon for my work. Poisoned in the Fimir War, he had had his last will written down and taken to Kraka Drak, for he had foreseen in futures only that his body was stolen and used for evil. There could be no escaping
being stolen, being forged: but escaping the evil that sought to use him? That was within his power, by ensuring it would instead be used by one of worth, one not of evil born but someone pure, righteous, unmarked by the depravities of the world.
It had arrived in a chest perhaps a month after I had decided that I would be heading out and begun asking around, preserved with enchantments and not Runes, a sure sign perhaps of the continued development of the traditions of the Brana, developing apace, developing things of both subtlety and of ability. Not simply exploding everything they disliked with lightning and ice shards and shearing winds but really, well and truly subtle weavings of the winds to improve their lives, such that it was.
There was something gratifying in that.
And so, the time came to forge even as I finished sketching.
--
The fire crackled as I examined the plans, the Runes providing power as the bars of Adamant heated in the forge until I pulled it out and began to beat it on the anvil.
It was to be one, simple construction.
The head was first. A double-bitted thing, filigreed the pure gold color of the lightning and lacquered the darkest blue of the stormy sky. Symbols sacred to Grungni would be etched into the gold, telling the story of the forging of Drongundum as passed down by the priests and the elders, flowing along in Agrurhun, acting as a border for stories of the storming, the raging, the bellowing and bellicose, the one who sundered Senak, the one who saw the coming darkness on the horizon etched into the night-sky blue. Ancient stories, and therefore the best of stories. Grungni in the visage of a warrior, every glorious battle won, every terrible foe vanquished, as many as could be marked in the space of little more than my pinky nail and yet still detailed enough that the wise could see them indeed: The Death of Senak on the foothills of Azul, the breaking of Kairos in the Great Incursion, the Cleansing of Karak Ungor, victories stretching back millennia for a great Ancestor indeed for this ax.
The Ancestor most suited to summon the storm, for all His weapon was the hammer.
I saw it, I saw it done, and yet there was still work to do and so I pushed forward, even as the heat grew to a hellish fire and the forge, the smith, my workshop became as the indeed of a great, smoky brazier that burned and burned and burned indeed.
The haft, Adamant as well to ensure it could withstand the power I sought to unleash. Long and thick, for durability, left lacquered blue as the ax itself was. Etched in silver bands like the storm clouds themselves, more peaceful stories of Grungni, a reminder of His wisdom and His Foresight. For the death of Senak? Erecting the Keep over top Dalgrung Ankor, creating the Runes that would protect it. Another band, opening the mines of Karak Ungor and taking sapphires, rubies, emeralds diamonds and more, the appropriate stones studded onto the silver to emphasize their beauty. Kairos' defeat, the procession of trophies through the streets of Karaz A Karak taken from his mortal slaves. On and on it went, through the ages, back and back and back, until it reached the most important victory of all: Leaving Zorn. I would include a grip of pearl as well, shiny and pristine, white as the lightning, and split from the rest of the body with precious jewels indeed, ten well-cut dronril above it and ten below it, carved like rain drops and shimmering in the forge light already.
--
It passed quickly, and so now it was left to me to make the Runes.
Power Flows.
I pressed the chisel against the Adamant, still red hot, and began to mark the symbol. The Master Rune first, the Master Rune demanding the best of me, all of my ability and all of my skill, for all that I would never, ever, produce anything but my best, no matter what. I was sweating already, but I kept the eye on the prize. On the Master Rune of Currents.
Skill Guides It.
Blows and chants, chant and blows. A simple process, drilled into me over centuries. "Strike the metal hot in honor of lordly Grungni, mighty Grungni, Grungni whose voice is like thunder and whose exhalation is like the gales at the very mountain's peak, His icy wrath paramount." A potent Rune indeed. It strikes with fierce cold wind indeed. Sharp and unblockable and fast, most of all I needed fast for the Dawi have many strengths but speed is not among them, not in that sense. So my chisel beat it, and beat it, and beat it, a million strikes if I needed a million, even as I ignored the sweat pouring down my brow like so much ale down a chugging beardling's whiskers. I had more important things to focus on, after all.
Need Calls It.
Soon enough the physical structure was done. At the moment, blinking little sky blue sparks danced about it, demanding sustenance, demanding to be fed like a needy garazi and I had the meal for them right where I needed it. Taking the Stormcaller's Brain in its wooden bowl I began ladling it into the Rune and the second it touched the mark it disappeared, the power contained and constrained within immediately channeled and harnessed by the metal of the ax. Wind blew around, so cold it froze the stone of my workshop, the wutroth of the furniture, the tools nearest the furnace and indeed the furnace itself steamed.
Ability Demands It.
I ignored it all, and instead I simply kept focusing on feeding it, even as my beard was mussed and the apron I wore was tousled and the fire roared and I heard the winds whipping around. It would take more than some cold air and some bad attitude from this bratty, hungry Rune to break my will, not when my pride as an artist was on the line. I simply kept ladling instead, scooping up more and more of the brain even as the winds grew fiercer and fiercer, colder and colder. As the room grew cold in spite of the crackling fire, as ice began to travel up my hammer, as crystals formed on the wood--until there was a single, last
screaming gale and all at once, the Rune was complete, shimmering on the hot Adamant which itself had seemed almost already to form a patina of sorts, for all I knew it could not be so.
Power Flows.
No rest for the artist, I began marking the body of Senak, that abomination, with the Rune of Chain Lightning, or at least its physical structure at the moment (it would need something mightier indeed to be worthy of this construction). A simple Rune, but a potent one in the right hands. Powerful already, and then combine that with the unblockable potency of the Master Rune of Currents? I could simply toss freezing cold shocks at the enemy, unblockable and sharp. They'd have no choice but to fight
me, or risk dying by my hand anyway since I could simply keep tossing the bolts of lightning from as far away as I wanted. And fighting me, with this, would not be a winner. And if it was a horde I faced, some nameless thing of more numbers than sense, the unblockable bolt I unleashed could leap from foe to foe, stopping hearts and minds as it went along its grim work.
Patience Channels It.
The Rune twinkled a little, a healthy blue light, after so many hours, and so I gave it what it asked for properly, like it had some manners to it. The heart of the storm, the heart of the evil, the heart of the lightning, and it took it gracefully, certainly in comparison to the tantrum of the Master Rune of Currents. Bolts discharged to be sure, but little things, small things, ones not nearly mighty enough to harm a Runesmiths, ones not mighty enough to harm a student of the Gift-Giver, ones not mighty enough to harm me. They kept away from my beard, too, for that matter, as I painted the Dragon Ogre Shaggoth's Heart, rendered into a paste, into the Rune.
Refinement Shapes It.
But of course, I did notice some difference from the usual Rune. Rather than the light blue, the lightning slowly but surely began to take on a royal shade of purple, something shimmering and prismatic, like a jewel or something altogether more eerie, depending on how inclined you were to superstition of the worst kind. Was it some part of the heart Remembering what it had been? Was it the Rune taking on some portion of the abomination's nature for it had been given the heart like a seed? Was it merely the nature of such power?
Focus Crystallizes It.
I scarcely cared. Beyond that Master Snorri had used Kholek's
brain in Skarrenbakraz (and with no testing for that matter) with no ill effect, I myself had done tests, research, looked at the results recorded in Kazaghar, and looked at folklore, at myth. Power, rage, might harnessed and then unleashed in its purest sense as an abomination aged beyond age was turned to an end more productive than his original life, a spiteful use indeed. They were mighty scions of Chaos; but not, it seemed, mightier than my will, or the Brana they had sought to snuff out like a candle light in the mine.
Power Flows.
The last Rune. My body wavered, hunger and thirst finally making themselves known, but I ignored it, ignored the strain after I did not know how long, to instead focus on carving the final Rune. A Rune of worth. The Rune of Shearing Winds, the Rune to finalize this ax. With this, I could be a storm, much like Master Snorri, less potent perhaps but more controlled, more harnessed. And deadlier to singular combatants. But with this, I made myself a threat to the many, as well, for the shearing winds would carve and flow and slice along with the lightning and the currents.
Heart Fuels It.
Entire lines of enemy soldiers carved down like the wheat before a sickle, the stone before a pick, a cliff before the tide. The lightning of Grungni followed by the slicing winds, cold as the gales at the mountain top. And what of a singular champion? Mighty creatures could cast themselves against it and mighty creatures could be unmade, unworked, shattered, broken, cut apart. There are abominations that can survive it, thrive in it even, but they are few and far between even in a world this grand and this depraved and this expansive. And for those that can survive, a hard edge of unblockable Adamant awaits.
Mind Forges It.
A rebuke, an edge, a taunt, and a gap filled. Could there be a better dedicated thing to murder singularly excellent opposition? Almost certainly. If the Hammerspite desired it, if Snerra put her back into it, they could shape something that would unmake daemons and Beastmen and aberrations alike, Great Unclean Ones and Lords of Change and Keepers of Secrets and Bloodthirsters with the ease a dog barks. Certainly there's that which can kill the masses better, Master Snorri's burned cities with his cloak alone, never mind any of the other potent legends he's forged.
Love Quenches It.
But this? This can do it all. And not just adequately, not just passably, not just decently, but excellently. A living storm, a bank of lightning and cessation and death pulled down from the mountain tops and unleashed. The Windswept Peak, spoken of in
Myths, something strove for unleashed now and unto the end of the Empire, unto the breaking of Azamar, unto the shattering of things. It is spite manifest, it is an ax with few equals.
A Father Wields It.
It is Dronaz-Druegi.
It is the Thunder War Ax.
It is mine.
