Tales of U-K8P: A Storm from the South
Part 11 - Finale
There was, Lissele reflected as she moved smoothly from rat's tail stance into a waterfall block, a bit of a blind spot created by fighting the same type of enemy in the same location for a hundred years. (Her sword whipped around into boar's tusk, taking half her opponent with it and giving her a moment to suck down a breath.) Especially when that opponent was orcs. They tended to fall into the same patterns, use the same gambits. (Seeing the proximate tactical threat, she stepped forwards, boar's tusk transitioning to hawk's beak like a farmer tossing hay with a pitchfork, and a second opponent went flying over the battlements to break on their foundations.) This inevitably led to defenders becoming… well, efficient was one word for it, calcified was another. So when change came, it came uncomfortably close.
Fortunately, she had a lot of recent experience fighting the dead.
Three more steps in a quick shoulder-charge, knocking down enemies but not ending them. A risk, as it was a good way to get swarmed, but a necessary one. With a shout, she kicked out at the rickety ladder of wood and bone that was ferrying the tide of dried skeletons and greenskin zombies up the wall. Once, and it rocked back before smashing forward. Twice, and she could see the skeletons around her climbing back to their feet. A third time- it cracked as her kick shoved it away from the wall, and upon falling forwards and smashing back onto the battlements where it cracked again, and with a splintering creak fell sideways as wood failed and the whole thing collapsed.
Well, that worked too, she thought with a mental shrug and set about clearing the walltop of any ambulatory invaders.
The dead had been a nasty shock when they appeared. It was orcs that the undumgi had been called to deal with- a sudden flood of greenskins had come pouring out against the gauntlet and gotten shredded by cannonfire, another case of the unpredictable greenskin yen for a fight coming at the worst possible time. Or so they had thought. It wasn't until the last few ranks of greenskins had proven instead to be zombies that they began to guess at the truth: the Tomb King, in his relentless quest to pry open the defences of the Karak, had chosen to go straight through the Black Crag to open a new front. The orcs had been naught but the chaff pushed before his advance.
But even the relentless dead could falter in their assaults, as they did now, with no easy path forwards. (Other ladders had been broken, or drenched in oil and set alight.) The dwarven cannon remained silent- 'twas easier for the enemy to re-raise a shattered skeleton than for the dwarves to make a charge of powder and grapeshot, so grim logistics dictated that none be spent on a threat as harmless as a mob of skeletons milling at the base of a wall they had no means of climbing. Some of the undumgi amused themselves tossing down small rocks to shatter skulls. Lissele went to take a nap. After all, she had been fighting for near an hour straight and her arms felt like slow cooked meat, near ready to fall off her bones. And she knew it could be days, or hours, or minutes until the next wave.
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Darna whooped as her back swing bit into a spine. It had been near an hour of straight fighting, and she felt ALIVE, as if her blood were fizzing and she was breathing fire. The cowardly rats had been giving ground reluctantly as the Dawi tightened like a vice around them, and she was sure that they'd break soon. To her right and left, the shield walls ground forwards. Behind her, the snap-creak of quarrelers volleying. And ahead, she could almost make the junction where the Grand Avenue forked off to the Citadel and the Black Crag.
"Khazukan Khazukit HA!"
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Hannah looked up from her book through tear-blurred eyes. It was hard not to draw parallels, to *feel* van Hal's despair as her own. Rats scrabbling about the dark, taking lives, eating bodies. A tide of unburied corpses that threatened to drag down the living. Death. Everywhere, death.
She sobbed, great shuddering breaths and quiet choked noises. Even here, alone in the wide chamber at the top of the massive gilded tower that was *somehow* hers, she couldn't let herself wail and scream with the emotions that overflowed. The old grandfatherly dwarf who had fit a hole in her heart she had never known was there- dead. The quietly boisterous squad of miners and rangers who had taken her under their wings- dead. And somewhere out there, below, in the darkness, her two dearest friends in the world- if they weren't dead yet then they were fighting for their lives.
She *knew*- or at least, some part of her, that part that would have burnt the Liber Mortis on sight had she not been so weak- she knew that what she was doing was a terrible idea. "Stupid Hannah, so stupid!" She berated herself. "Sure, read the terrible tome of dark magics, nothing can possibly go wrong from that! Do it sick with worry and grief- ha! The parallels almost write themselves."
She gave a hiccuping laugh at that last thought. After all, who would know? She was the only person to have read his journal in a century or more, to know enough of Fredrick van Hal's thoughts and life to even see how his journal made for her own personal Vlad von Carstein, all bound nearly up between leather covers. The only person to have read these pages since… since Lady Magister Mathilde Weber. A thought she clung to like a lifeline. (She was almost sure Magister Johann had never so much as opened the strongbox- after all, who would leave such a thing just lying about, if they had any clue what it truly was?)
The Lady Magister had read these pages, and had done it without turning into a ravening monster. It could be done.
And she had wanted a weapon, hadn't she? It was exactly like all those old children's stories her ma used to tell her in the cold shack in Altdorf- a tempter would come along, offering that which you desired most in the world. A new life as a noble. A sword powerful enough to win any battle.
A way to save those you loved from dying.
All it would cost you was your soul.
Of course, this was the real world, and her tempter was but the words of a man long dead. But the temptation was there. The offer was real. The secrets the Liber Mortis concealed were potent indeed- in between the laments for the dead and the discussion of the Morrite secrets involved in interring them with too few hands was Dhar. How to use it, to bind it and unbind it. How to call up legions like the ones that assailed them now, and how to rip the heart from those spells and scatter the legions like dust.
It had been done in the past. The histories were clear about Kurt III, the Grand Theogonist who had broken the necromantic armies of Mannfred von Carstein. But there was one thing they had all, every one of them, concealed. That the greatest priest of Sigmar had opened his soul to dark magic, had grasped and cast Dhar, the same as his enemy.
She could do it too. And all it would cost was her soul.
Outside the tower the cannons thudded and popped, faint screams making their way to her from the west gates and southern walls where the dead sought entrance. Karagril remained clean of signal flag or fire, the battle beneath still ongoing.
But perhaps… perhaps there was still time yet. Perhaps she didn't need to use these secrets she had learned. Perhaps her friends, her love, would win through with faith and steel and powder.
Perhaps she could pretend that she didn't have a choice to make. For a little bit longer.
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Lissele jolted awake from her catnap to the near-familiar ringing of alarm bells and crump of gunpowder. It took her only a moment to grab her sword and her helmet, but several more as her mind caught up to her body and she tried to figure out where to go. The Tomb King's assault on the gauntlet had been blunted, she remembered that much, and she had wandered back into the fortress to grab what rest she could- old soldiers' habits were as deep-sunk into her as any veteran thrice her age by the grinding siege. But the noises were coming…
Her eyes widened. The noise of battle was coming from inside the Karak!
Running out into the narrow corridors and desperately rallying any undumgi she could find, she rushed to the inner gate. That same inner gate she had dismissed as ornamental mere hours ago, now barred against assaulting skaven and their monstrosities.
She was still a few dozen yards away when they were blasted inwards, some bit of technosorcery the skaven had hoarded for weeks now expended to create an escape for the desperate rats. Whatever it was flung her on her back, sending her skidding almost through the entire fortress to the gates on the far side. Which were once again under assault from the far side. She allowed herself the luxury of a sigh before dragging herself back to her feet.
She almost wished she could have stayed down. Almost.
In front of her the skaven surged forwards between the two 'ornamental' bastions, the one on the left listing drunkenly as the aftereffects of the blast worked themselves out. Behind her the last barrier between the Karak and the dead shuddered. To her left and right, the scattered garrison trying to form up into ranks before they were swarmed. There was, she supposed, only one real option left to her.
"UNDUMGI! RALLY TO ME!" She screamed, and ran forwards- a counterattack into the skaven thrust, to break their momentum before they could break open the last gate. She hoped it worked. She hoped she didn't die in the attempt.
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Darna cursed her earlier optimism. Oh, the rats had broken all right- broken through the cordon keeping them penned in against dwarvish axes, and now the little bastards were running, fleeing the marching shield walls as if water from a holed bucket. The meeting of the two thrusts from Ziflin and Lhune was no victory celebration, but a quick exercise in dwarven discipline and marching order as King Belegar bellowed and cursed the two wide, slow-moving fronts into a column moving moving perpendicular to both at twice the speed.
On the plus side, her position on the left flank of the initial advance had placed her in the vanguard of the new column, and that meant she was running at the side of the king and his hammerers once again. She couldn't help but take that as a good sign- they had almost broken Moulder rats last time, and this time there was no undefended Karak to scramble to secure instead of killing them to the last.
On the minus side, it gave her a front-row view as they cut down the rat ogres who held the top of the ramp into the Gauntlet and crested their corpses. Because what she saw was Lissele, rolling out from underneath the collapsing mount of the Master Moulder as he chittered and swung his electrowhip at her, cutting deep grooves in the stone. She saw the last of the rat ogres lifting up the bar that held shut the outer gates. She saw the knots in the swarming tide of vermin that signaled where the last bits of the garrison were dragged under.
King Belegar roared his challenge, rushing forwards. The master moulder squeaked in terror, his former target forgotten. Lissele, otherwise surrounded and outnumbered, threw herself at him in an attack. Darna locked shields with the rest of the vanguard and charged. The rat ogre dropped the bar, bellowing in triumph as the last obstacle on it's escape route was cleared.
Darna saw the gate burst open and the tide of starving, desperate rats driven to escape met the wall of old bones and dread magic that was a Tomb King's advance.
It was a massacre.
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Something had happened.
Hannah was moving almost before she realized, slamming the Liber Mortis back into it's strongbox leaving it carelessly on the seat of the dragon throne as she rushed down the stairs. She was through the doors to her tower before she realized what her subconscious had already noted- the cannonfire had stuttered, and the mustering horns cried for every spare soul to reinforce Karagril.
She was at the entrance to Karagril (almost without noticing the intervening distance) when she heard more- moulder had been crushed, but their counterstroke had opened the way for the Tomb King, and he had thrown in his elites. Their attack into the over-extended dwarven lines had broken through, and chaos now reigned under Karagril.
King Belegar was missing, presumed cut off. The Undumgi were decimated, shattered into a hundred pieces fighting a thousand battles on a score of fronts. And the reinforcements now flooding down into the mountain were drawn from the fronts to the south and west even as the fighting there continued.
Her heart in her throat, she fell in with a squad of Clan Huzkul miners who seemed to be headed directly for the thick of it, the directives given to her by the healers to avoid casting forgotten in the face of looming catastrophe.
Once, twice- a half-dozen times they skirmished with the forces of the dead, the innumerable twisting tunnels suddenly a blessing as the dwarves leveraged their knowledge of their home to wipe out the lost and floundering elements of the enemy's vanguard. Hannah held herself to only firebolts and magic darts, though even the minimal amounts of aqushy needed for that caused an uncomfortable itch in her throat where the remnants of the healing jade winds still lingered.
And then, all at once it seemed, they broke out into the Grand Avenue, just behind the broken fortress of the Gauntlet.
There, she found a tableau out of some bardish fever-dream: ten thousand or more skeletons swarmed about a mound of corpses topped by the sprawled carcass of the Master Moulder, electrowhip still sparking as it trailed down the side. Above stood King Belegar, one foot still on the throat of the rat that had cracked open his kingdom, hammers in both of his hands almost blurring as he rendered those who tried him into dust. Below, behind, holding the enemy away from his back were his hammerers, runic gromril flaring and casting harsh silhouettes against the walls and ceilings. And tucked behind them, almost unnoticeable unless, like Hannah one were looking hard for them, were the remnants of the dwarven vanguard and one half-broken human.
For a moment wild hope surged in her breast- they were alive! And she had found them! And oh, mighty was the wrath of the dwarf king that fell upon those who sought to reach them.
But then reality sank in. The skeletons and zombies were not the only foes who threatened; a block of animated statues twice as tall as a man were forging towards what looked certain to be King Belegar's last stand, while huge scorpions advanced on the few firing positions the dwarven cannon and organ guns had retained, shielding themselves from the storm of lead with massive claws. And Lissele was not moving. Darna- it must have been Darna- was crouched over her, teeth bared in a snarl.
So Hannah looked about herself, and found one soul to be a price eminently worth paying.
She reached out, grabbing the shyish of imminent death, the chamon of weapons and armor, the ulgu of fear and confusion, and crushed them together with the aqushy that bubbled through her. Dhar bloomed, deep in her soul, and she reached out.
And twisted.
A/N- Apologies for writing this whole thing on my phone, but needs must when the muse drives. There's going to be one final bit, an epilogue, but this scene is really what drove the whole project- I had a vision of this a while ago and I've been writing the whole thing up to it.
Please do note that while I did toss the main points over to Boney for evaluation, the only thing he wanted me to make clear is that this use of the Liber Mortis and the second secret of dhar against a Nehekharan army SHOULD NOT BE TAKEN AS CANON- if we want to see if this actually works in quest, "Try it and find out" most definitely applies.
