The False Moon War: Chapter 26

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Chapter 26.  The Last Stand

As the Great Unclean One pressed to the front, Caneghem felt a sensation that made his teeth jangle. 

The command, "Come," formed wordlessly in his mind.  "Bring the cube, and your kin."

"Brothers!"  Caneghem shouted, "Our Lord calls us to bring the solar cube to him!"

The four lizardmen warriors nodded and waited expectantly.  From his position on Bessie's howdah, the skink priest grasped the mystic cube at the heart of Chotec's solar engine and tugged.  The cube did not budge.  Its depleted active face glowed sullenly.

"Rodekhil!  Help me with this." 

The ogre joined him on the howdah.  Even using his considerable strength, he could not release the cube from its five finger-like clamps.  He used one of his falchions as a lever.  The blade bent double and then splintered into shards.

"Argsplat!"  Rodekhil shouted,  "Buy us some time!"

"Right!"

The misshapen ogre stumped part way down the ramp.  He was alone, but for his meat axe, bladed hook and elegantly carved Queen Anne style peg-legs.

*****

When the wave of pestilent things of Nurgle seemed ready to flow over him, he held his meat axe high.  "I CHALLENGE!"  he bawled.

The wave ebbed and parted.  The Great Unclean One advanced to the head of the path that had been opened for him.

"None shall pass!"  Argsplat squared his shoulders and brandished his weapon.

The Great Unclean One paused midstride and emitted a loud coughing gargle.  Ropes of mucus quivered between his fleshy lips.  Paroxysms gripped him and his shoulders quivered.  It took Argsplat a moment to realize that he was laughing.

"I have no quarrel with you, brave ogre, but I will mount this bridge,"  the daemon snickered.

"Then you shall die."  Argsplat swung his meataxe and severed the creature's right arm with one mighty blow.  "You are defeated.  Now stand aside."

The daemon couldn't contain his mirth.  More choking sounds and shudders ensued.  " 'Tis but a scratch!"

"A scratch?  Your arm's off!"

"I've had worse."

"Actually... I know how you feel,"  Argsplat mused.

The daemon grinned and swept his Bale-sword low, splintering Argsplat's wooden legs.

"Right!  I'll do you for that!"  from Argsplat's new, somewhat lower position, he had an unobstructed view of the daemon's oedematous legs.  The meat axe swung twice, and the daemon joined him on the ground.

The Unclean One grinned at his oozing stumps.  "Just a flesh wound.  I'm invincible!"

"You're a looney...."

"Nurgle always triumphs!  Have at you!"

With his one remaining arm he struck a heavy over hand blow with the bale sword.  This would have split Argsplat from right shoulder to left waist had the ogre not raised his hook in a desperate parry.  The blow was deflected, but the hook was torn from its socket.

The daemon's follow through left him vulnerable for a split second as his festering arm crossed his body.  The meat axe swung true, and the daemon's sword arm joined the growing pile of appendages on the pavement.

Argsplat pointed at the daemon's limbless torso with his axe. "Victory is mine."

The daemon coughed and gargled again.  This time it was not laughter.  A stream of corrosive bile spurted from the daemon's mouth and onto Argsplat's outstretched arm.  Flesh and tendons melted from crumbling bone.

Argsplat paused to assess the damage.  His arm below the elbow had been dissolved. 

"All right.  We'll call it a draw."

The daemon gargled in mirth again.  From the oozing stumps of his arms and legs, yellow headed boils erupted.  They swelled and burst, releasing stinking pus and tiny vestigial limbs.  The limbs quickly regenerated to their original size.

"I like this game," the daemon giggled as he lifted Argsplat by the shoulders.

Argsplat's eye swam.  This close to the daemon's face he was unable to escape the daemon's feculent halitosis.  He pulled his head back as far as he could.

"Time for round two?" asked the daemon.

"You cheated!"

Argsplat slammed his rocklike head into the daemon's brow.

The head butt made a hollow sound, like pair of colossal coconut halves being clapped together.  The impact caused a depressed fracture of the creature's skull.  The intracranial pressure build up was sufficient to force the daemon's rotten brains to ooze out of his blobby ears.

"Victory is mine."  Argsplat declared as he dragged himself back to the ogre lines.  The remaining daemons of Nurgle began to mill about in disarray.

Caneghem and Rodekhil had tried brute strength, leverage, hammer blows and bad language on the cube of the Old Ones with no success.  Chotec's engine stubbornly refused to release its grasp.

Rhodekhil glanced over and saw that Argsplat had squirmed back to the ogre line.  "Argsplat!" he yelled desperately, "Lend a hand will you!"

Argsplat apologetically held up two ragged stumps.

"A hand?  That's it!"  Caneghem cried,  "Rodekhil come here!"

The skink priest inspected the hand shaped imprint on the back of the engine.  The four fingered lizardmen could release the power stored in the cube by pressing a hand into the print.  What would happen if five fingers were inserted?

Caneghem gestured to Rodekhil to press his fingers into the depressions.  Then he cringed back.

Rodekhil seemed equally reluctant to perform this experiment.  He gingerly placed his fingers into the grooves one by one, and finally pushed his trembling thumb home.

With an unimpressive click, the clamps released.  The cube tumbled onto the howdah.  Caneghem snatched it up and scampered to the temple mouth.  "Come!" he called over his shoulder.

The other Lizardmen turned to follow, but were distracted by a commotion at the base of the ramp.  A well ordered phalanx of Bloodletters of Khorne were thrusting through the disorganized swarms of Nurglings.  At their head was a winged fiend many times their size.

"Fall back!  Fall back to the temple!"  Rodekhil herded his remaining ironguts through the arch and dragged Argsplat behind him.  Bob, Joe and Rychek moved to follow.

"What about Bessie?  And Rudolph?"  Mahtis asked.

"They can't fit through the door.  Come on!"  Joe urged.

"We can't leave them."  Mahtis planted his feet.

"It's okay,"  Rychek held up his hands in a placating gesture.  He whispered into Bessie's ear-hole and stood well back.

The usually placid beast's eyes bulged, and she bellowed with apprehension.  She tucked her head down, presenting a wall of bony plates, and thundered blindly down the ramp.

Rudolph the Rhinox saw his sweetheart disappearing, bellowed, and gave pursuit.  Those daemon's that dodged or survived the bony wrecking ball had scant time to recover before confronting the tossing horns of the battering ram that followed.  The pair careened off the ramp and into the wild night beyond.

The phalanx of Khornelings was no longer quite so well ordered.

"I've seen you do that before.  What do you say to her?"  Bob asked.

"Oh, I just tell her that the Karak Andstick Combined Pipes and Drums are coming back."  replied Rychek.

*****

Bob, Joe, Rychek and the fretting Mahtis entered the jaws of the Dinner Gong Chamber.  Caneghem had already passed through to go to his master's side.

The ogre troopers had somehow released the great brass gong from its chains.  They rolled it across the gaping arch as soon as the lizardmen came into the refuge.  They began to reinforce the barricade with the kitchen supplies that had been neatly stacked on one side of the chamber.

The lizards found Rodekhil binding kitchen utensils onto the stumps of Argsplat's legs with lengths of rawhide.  He already had a rolling pin and frypan lashed to his arms.

"What are you doing?" asked Rychek.

Rodekhil looked up, "I'm assembling my troops...."

"No time for that!  Come!"

Argsplat waved him away with the pan.  "The lads will hold for as long as need be.  Go."

Rodekhil blinked tears from his eyes and looked to clasp hands with his most trusted trooper.  He eventually settled for tugging Argsplat's left earlobe.  The irongut himself snapped a crisp salute and knocked himself out cold with the frypan.

The clang seemed louder than it should have.  Then it echoed again and again.  Rodekhil saw that the brass gong was being struck with heavy blows.

"Ironguts!"  Rodekhil addressed the bare half dozen that still stood.  "You will hold here, by whatever means are necessary."

The battered soldiers nodded grimly as he lumbered away through the arch and onto the bridge.

*****

The Exalted Bloodthirster of Khorne was still experiencing the after effects of the sensual attack of Slaanesh's Keeper of Secrets.  In addition to his usual rage, he found that other emotions continued to intrude.  On the whole, they were not unpleasant. 

He had felt satisfaction as he broke the physical body of the hated Slaaneshi and banished his essence back to the Chaos realm.

When the Great Unclean One had fallen, and had felt amusement as his last rival was eliminated.

When he called the Bloodletters to his side, he felt pride at their disciplined savagery.

As he approached the barricaded temple, he felt anticipation.  Soon Lord Khorne's thirst would be slaked with the blood of a mighty Slann Mage Priest.

He struck at the brass disk which sealed the temple and felt delight as it gave way slightly under the onslaught of his dully glowing axe.  He struck again and again until there was a thin rent many feet across.

Impatience possessed him, and he cast the axe to the ground.  He seized the edges of the fissure with two powerful hands and bent the edges back until the hole was wide enough for him to thrust his head and shoulders through.

On the other side he was confronted by six puny ogres.  The amusement he felt lasted until he saw what they held in their hands.

Each one held a spork, laden with steaming mashed potato.  On the shaft of each spork was a gleaming dwarven rune of accuracy.

The Bloodthirster experienced a new feeling.  This one started as a hard knot in his stomach and rose to flood his whole body with debilitating weakness. 

The feeling was fear.


To Chapter 27 The False Moon

Happy Father's Day 2014

Father's Day in Skavenblight

Father's Day in Lustria

The False Moon War: Chapter 25

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Chapter 25.  Divided We Fall

The remaining dozen Daemonettes of Slaanesh had evaded Bob and Joes' rock fall.  As they mounted the narrow stair at the north side of the dinner gong chamber, the ogres and monsters were occupied by the process of sweeping the pestilence of Nurgle off the ramp for the sixth time.

The defenders still fought fiercely, but their numbers had started to dwindle.  A few had fought their last battle and lay still upon the concourse.  Others, too wounded to continue the cycle of charge, smash and withdraw, had crawled or been dragged into the shadow of the battle wagon, which was still chocked near the temple gate.

Ordinarily the daemonettes would have fallen on the wounded and gorged themselves on the pain and fear of their victims before they died.  This time they were pulled magnetically through the unoccupied gong chamber and onto the bridge to nowhere.

Like bees to honey, they were drawn to the delicious scent of pain and anguish which oozed from Hellun of Troyarg's every pore.

When Welhung had left her to settle accounts with the Lord of Bees Hellun propped herself up against the bridge's low parapet.  Her labour was well advanced, but her womb stubbornly refused to release her child, until her deity was appeased.

The Great Maw stubbornly refused to break its fast.  It had not even accepted the sacrifice of the powerful Herald of Nurgle, moments earlier.

Hellun was alone, and at the last extremity of hopelessness, exhaustion, grief and agony.  The daemonettes who now clustered in front of her savoured the sensations.

"We feel your anguish sister"  one of the depraved ones addressed her.  "It is a tribute worthy for our lord, Slaanesh himself.  Would you have us give you release from your suffering?"  She raised a claw suggestively.

Hellun looked up with glassy eyes.  "You would give me release?"  She whispered, then screwed up her eyes.  "GIVE...ME...AN...EPIDURAL!!!!!!!!" 

The screech was the loudest sound ever uttered by a mortal throat.  No banshee could have emulated it in its octave range or its intensity.  The daemonettes' physical forms were shredded to atoms, and their daemonic essences were violently and permanently torn from the mortal plane of existence. 

In his pleasure palace in the Realm of Chaos, Slaanesh winced.

*****

Bob and Joe were carefully scrambling over the scree of rubble they had created, when the sonic wave struck like a battering ram.  Not for the first time they thanked the Old Ones for their lack of ears.  After that, they needed all their energies and concentration to ride clear of the rocks which had been startled back into motion.

Once they had their feet back on solid earth they dusted themselves off.  When they turned to recommence their pursuit of the daemonettes they found their way blocked by a pair of tree-like legs which ended in black cloven hooves.  The legs were clad in brass filigreed greaves and cuisses.

Their eyes tracked upwards to take in the full terror of Greater Daemon of Khorne.  The Bloodthirster's black wings were spread, his eyes were aflame, and his clawed hands were clenched around a dully glowing brass axe.  The axe alone was easily taller than both lizardmen combined.

"Spears up!"  Bob pushed Joe forward.  As he stepped back a pace, just to make sure that the Bloodthirster knew who his challenger was, Bob became aware of another presence behind him.

The second daemon lord was leaner and smoother than the Khorneling, but no less menacing. The purple daemon had an extra pair of arms which ended in scissor-like claws.  In one of its more normal hands it held a whip with several thongs which ended in scorpion stings.  The other held a magical staff tipped with the symbol of Slaanesh.

"Oh great!" Bob moaned,  "Now I'm going to be consumed by an exalted Keeper of Secrets, and my soul will be chained for all eternity in the Pleasure Palace to gratify Slaanesh's lusts!  How could this be worse?"

The Keeper of Secrets leered hungrily.

"Don't be stupid!"  Joe berated him, "Being decapitated and having your gleaming skull presented to the mighty Blood God, Khorne, is much worse.  Khorne is rage and hate and violence all bundled together.  Much worse."

"Slaanesh is worse!  I can't even imagine the degrading acts that I will be forced to perform!"

"Khorne is worse!  He sits on a throne made of skulls.  I don't want to be a bauble!"

"Slaanesh is worse!"

"Khorne!"

"Slaanesh!"

"Khorne!"

"Slaanesh!"

"Raaargh!  Enough!"  The Bloodthirster had tired of the interplay.  "My Lord Khorne is the mightiest!  He alone is to be worshipped and feared!"

"Khorne?  He is so.....crude."  The rival daemon mused.  "His emotional range only goes from annoyance to fury.  There is so much more to be... experienced.  Lord Slaanesh is greater."

The Bloodthirster brushed the two saurus aside with the flat of his axe and stood nose to nose with the Slaaneshi.  "Khorne is greatest!  Lust for nothing except hate!  Raaargh!"

The Keeper of Secrets rolled his eyes.  "Slaanesh is greater."

"Khorne!"

"Slaanesh!"

"Khorne!"

"Slaanesh!"

" Khorne is greatest!  Raaaargh!"  The Bloodthirster smashed his axe into the flagstones at the Slaaneshi's feet, knocking him back a few steps.

The Keeper of Secrets, dusted himself off with his whip.

"Your mighty Khorne cannot do this..."  He thrust his staff forward and the symbol of Slaanesh, a spiky combination of orbs and crescents, began to glow.  A stream of sensations poured into the Khornate beast's unprepared amygdala."

It was the Bloodthirster's turn to be driven back, as a wave of love, melancholy, sympathy, pride, grief, affection and despair flooded through him.  The brass axed fell from his nerveless fingers.  When the storm of emotion abated, the Daemon wiped a single steaming tear of joy and sadness from his eye.

"You are right.  Khorne cannot give these.....feelings..."  He raised his head.  "...but I wonder what your Slaanesh thinks of THIS feeling..."

The Bloodthirster seized the Slaaneshi's spiky staff and began a spirited effort to stick it up the Keeper of Secrets' bottom.

"I think we should leave them to it," whispered Bob, and he and Joe tiptoed back to the Temple of the Great Maw.

In his Pleasure Palace in the Realm of Chaos, Slaanesh's eyes began to water.

*****

Bob and Joe arrived on the ramp at the same time as Mahtis and Rychek.

"Nothing left to kill in the swamp," rumbled Mahtis sadly.

"How about the north flank?"  asked Rychek.

"Erm...  No significant conflict to report."  replied Joe.

"Yowie!"  There was a faintly heard scream from the ruins.  Rychek raised a scaly eyebrow, but neither Bob nor Joe would meet his eyes.

"Caneghem!  How goes the battle here?"

The skink priest called down from Bessie's back.  "We've got a battle wagon we can't use and two tiring monsters.  The good news is that most of the ogres still stand.  They can hold up groups of light infantry all night."

"What about those?"  Joe pointed to the base of the concourse.

"Those could pose a problem."

Eight gleaming Juggernauts of Khorne had picked their way out of the boulders with their Bloodcrusher riders on their backs.  The unit of magically animated brass monsters easily out massed the remaining ogres and they had the speed to outmanoeuvre Bessie and Rudolph.

Rodekhil and Argsplat ambled over to join the discussion.

"If they get the charge, they'll roll over the top of us."  Rodekhil scratched his chin.  "We could risk a charge on them, but I'm not certain that we would 'ave enough impact to break them."

"You should get the wounded back inside the temple."  Rychek glanced back at the ogres who were tending each other's wounds in the lee of the abandoned battle wagon.  "What about a chariot charge.  Enough impact?"

Rodekhil snorted.  "We can't turn the wagon before they get 'ere and Rudolph is just about spent.  That thing turned out to be just a big, spiky, rolling piece of deathtrap pie."

"It would be selfish not to share,"  Rychek observed.

The ogre pondered,  "Since we're not using it for anything... we could let them daemons 'ave a slice."

"Set it ablaze.  That should spice things up," Bob contributed.

"Ooh! Ooh!"  Argsplat flapped his hand and hook,  "You! Ugly!  Come with me!"  He stumped into the temple building without waiting for a response.

Caneghem looked at Rychek, who looked at Joe.  Joe looked at Bob, who aside from his eggshell, was pretty much identical to his spawnkin.  They all looked at Mahtis.

Mahtis curled his lip and sulked after the broken ogre.  A minute later both returned, laden with the kegs of black pepper.

"Tastes awful anyway,"  explained Argsplat as he loaded the casks into the wagon.  "I've got more of a sweet tooth."  He pointed at his one remaining yellowed molar, then tossed a flaming torch into the wagon.

"Shouldn't we, err...."  Joe peered nervously at the blazing contraption.

The whole group leapt to remove the chocks which had kept the chariot in place.  It groaned into motion and slowly gathered speed as it meandered down the ramp.  Halfway down, it was well alight and moving apace.  The Bloodcrushers merely split their formation and waited for the cart to trundle between them.

As the battle wagon drew abreast of the monstrous cavalry, it bounced violently over a loose cobble.  This must have dislodged the bung in one of the kegs.  The wagon erupted in a ball of red flame and white smoke.  The rocks, which the ogres had collected to use as missiles, and the sharpened bamboo stakes were hurled in all directions along with the iron bound wheels and heavy wooden structure of the wagon itself.

The Bloodcrushers were obliterated.

The detonation also levelled the terrain at the base of the ramp.  Without the screen of boulders which had sat there, innumerable daemons could be seen swarming like insects.  They crept up the ramp like an inexorable tide.

SomeTHING oozed its way up through the mass of lesser fiends.

A Greater Daemon of Nurgle.


To Chapter 26 The Last Stand

The False Moon War: Chapter 24

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Chapter 24.  The Ancient Conflict

The Sky Titans had once had a thriving town or city on this site.  With the impact of the warpstone comet, and the subsequent advent of the Great Maw, that city had been defiled, destroyed and abandoned.  The inhabitants had settled peacefully with their kin further west, only to be overrun and devoured by the migrating ogres from the Eastern Steppe.  Some peoples are just born unlucky.

Little of their architecture stood, but each of the dressed stone blocks was as big as a wagon.  Only the temple cities of the Old Ones were made of stones larger than this, and the secret of their construction had disappeared with the star faring masons themselves.

The jumble of masonry created a maze of passages, some with dead ends, some with pitfalls.  Delicately balanced heaps of rubble threatened to rain down with each clap of thunder.

"You won't be able to swing that spear in these tight passages.  It's useless."  Bob's opinion had not noticeably softened in the last several months.

"The spear will be fine.  Better than a hand weapon."

Bob snorted, "I'll go in front to protect you AND your pointy stick."

The sauri vaguely heard the roar of an ogre charge followed by a crunching impact.  A minute later there was some furious shrieking and a clash of metal.

"Its begun."  Joe looked up through a gap in the stones.  The moon was almost overhead.  "How long do you think before we see some action?"

There was a fierce growl.

"You had to ask, didn't you!"

The growl belonged to the mouth of a Chaos Warhound of Khorne.  The mouth also possessed dagger like teeth,  a lashing tongue and an unpleasant amount of foaming drool.  At this moment the mouth was being propelled towards the lizardmen by two hundred and forty pounds of frenzied muscle.  Bob barely had time to bring his sword up into a defensive position.

The mouth halted inches from Bob's face.  It had a new acquisition.  A flint bladed spear had penetrated its hard palate.  The point was lodged in the hound's tiny brain.  With his eyes, Bob traced the shaft of the spear back to where Joe was standing behind him.

"Excuse me, I was about to parry with my vastly superior hand weapon.  Kindly point that thing away."

Joe complied, and slung the spear over his shoulder.  At the same instant, another hound, which had somehow got onto the block above them, pounced on the lizardmen.  It impaled itself on the point of Joe's spear.  As Joe retrieved the weapon from the squirming corpse he saw more pairs of glowing eyes in the passage behind them.

"Go! That way!"  He shoved Bob forwards and raced after him, with the Hounds of Hell in murderous pursuit.

As Bob turned a corner, he saw his way was barred by a wide chasm.  He had no other option but to attempt the leap.  His legs bicycled in the air to get him a few extra inches of flight and he thudded, hard, into the opposite lip with his chest.  Winded, he scrabbled with his elbows to pull himself up.

Joe was only feet behind when he saw Bob fall short.  He jammed the toe of his spear into a crack in the floor and catapulted himself into the air, pole vault style.  He sailed over Bob's head and landed in a crouch.  The first of the slavering war hounds tried to pull up before the brink, but the two following it piled into the leader.  The trio slid, howling, into the bottomless shaft.

The last of the hounds managed to gather itself for a leap, but its graceful arc was interrupted by a flint blade.

Joe held the foot of his spear down for Bob to pull himself up, and looked at his spawnkin smugly.

"What?" snapped Bob.

"Nothing, nothing." 

The pair continued their patrol.

*****

Eventually they found themselves on top of the pile of rubble looking down over a flat strip of pavement on the brink of the Great Maw itself.  Some forty mewling daemonettes were advancing down it towards the temple, and the ogre's undefended flank.

"Joe!  Help me, this is heavy!"  Bob was straining to dislodge a sizeable boulder to crush the horde below.

           

"Lift with your knees, not your back,"  Joe advised. 

Rather than endure the withering glare that Bob directed at him, Joe wedged the butt of his spear under the rock and pressed on the lever with two mechanically advantaged fingers.

Bob snarled.

The boulder started to roll and dislodged everything around it.  Before long there was an avalanche of pebbles, rocks, boulders and lizards pelting headlong towards the hapless daemons.  Most of the screeching horde were swept over the brink.

*****

Welhung Thunderloin was torn.  He could hear the sounds of battle ebbing and flowing on three sides, but Hellun was quickly weakening.  His men would have to fend for themselves.  He turned to look back at the slann, wondering what it was like to have a cold heart and no ties to family.

The slann was still looking up at the Chaos Moon, as if judging distances and angles.  Welhung followed his gaze.  As always Morrslieb made him feel sick to his stomach.  The moon hung so low above them, it seemed to cover half of the sky.  A group of black dots slid across the orb, growing in size as they went.  The ogre tyrant became aware of a low, droning hum.

Here?  How had they found him?

He eased Hellun's head off his lap.  She emitted a deafening whimper.  "WHERE ARE YOU GOING, CUPCAKE?"

He winced,  "I've got to go.  I've got a score to settle."  He hefted his iron bound mace and strode to the end of the bridge to wait for his most hated foes.

"Sodding bees!" he said to himself.

*****

The squadron of Plague Drones of Nurgle were attempting to bypass the battle for the temple.  Their tattered wings had carried them far out over the Great Maw to afford them a clear approach to the slann and the nexus of geomantic power which suffused his body.  Their leader, a vile Herald of Nurgle directed his wing-daemons to swoop.

Taisteslaikch'ken was aware of their approach.  From his floating throne near the end of the Maw's causeway he raised a handful of spatulate fingers into the air.  Raw magical power coalesced between them, ready to be manipulated into any one of a dozen deadly forms.

"But it is too early.  All is not ready..." he croaked.

A rough hand grabbed his outstretched arm and pulled it back down.  "They are mine. You 'ear me?"  Welhung growled at the mage priest. 

Taisteslaikch'ken gave a single terse nod and returned his contemplation to the looming chaos moon.

The squadron of rot flies plunged from the sky in a loose "V" formation and zeroed in on the lumpy figure of the ogre tyrant.  Welhung stood with his iron flanged mace coiled back behind his head in a two handed grip reminiscent of the New World primitives playing their pointless bat and ball game.

As the plague drones strafed across the bridge he swung with all his might.  Strike!

One of the enormous insects whirled into the maw with one side of its thorax crushed.  "That's for Chaarlotte!"  Welhung bellowed after it.

The squadron parted around him like a wave split by the prow of a ship.  The two groups banked and the riders levelled their filthy plague swords again.  On this pass Welhung ducked the lead fly of one group and followed it with a blow which broke the creature's back.  The momentum of the swoop, combined with the hammer blow propelled the stricken fly into the path of leader the second group.  The combined mass and closing velocity of the two rotting hulks was enough to cause a very messy collision.  The entangled remains of the pair plummeted into the void.

"And that's for Harrrison! And Samantharg!"

Three rot flies remained, twirling in confusion. 

"That's for Rriley!  And Annikarrg!"  One fell with a compound eye and the brain behind it smashed to pulp.  Welhung fluidly used the momentum of this blow to whirl about-face, and shred the fragile wing membranes of his next hapless victim with the sharp iron flukes on the tip of his mace.  He paused to watch the broken insect's tail spinning descent.

With Welhung's guard thus lowered, the last of the flies was able to strike.  With a sickening squelch, it plunged its dripping sting into the ogre's back.

Welhung sank to his knees, his mace slipping from his nerveless fingers.  Nurgle's herald stilled his hovering mount and disembarked.  He stood in front of the stricken ogre.

"You fought well, but to no purpose.  You could not have defeated me.  I serve the Lord of Flies."

"You mean 'Lord of Bees' ?"  Welhung struggled to his feet.  The herald was surprised that the ogre had not yet succumbed to the poisonous sting.  Welhung scrabbled clumsily for his mace.  The herald shook his head in disbelief and stabbed his plague-sword into the gap under Welhung's left pauldron.

Without even acknowledging the wound, Welhung grasped the poisoned blade with one hand and slowly drew it out.  Blood welled from between his fingers.

The herald gasped.  Grandfather Nurgle had blessed the venomous blade.  It should not have only cut.  The wounds should have instantly started to fester and run with pus.

Welhung pushed the filthy sword away, stood, and turned to face the multifaceted eyes of the humming rot fly.  His bloody hand joined the other on the haft of his mace.

He slammed the heavy weapon down, driving the creature onto its many spiky knees.  "That's for Joshuarrg! And Chloee!  And Dyllan, Tylerrh, Rage-chel, Jaygob, Chaarrlie, Alexxiargh, Rryan, Cindry, Dolorious, Zaraargh, Hannahbal, Axxel, Chellsea, Maddison, Deckster, Slaed, Felanie, Blaeke, Harmonie, Eathem, Atrocity, Trravis, Phoebia, Scarah, Damniel, Hateley, Rocky, Maddnison, Phlegming, Angrea, Brattney, and Chastity!"

With every name, Welhung's mace rose and fell.  The rotfly of nurgle was reduced to a purulent pulp.

He turned back to Nurgle's Herald.  "You said you were with the 'Lord of Bees', didn't you?"

The daemon chose dark oblivion over liquefaction.  Without hesitation, he leapt off the bridge and into the grinding maw.

*****

Bob was buried under the rubble of the avalanche that he and Joe had created.  With his one free hand he groped for purchase.  He found a smooth shaft and pulled himself free.  The smooth cylinder was Joe's spear.  Joe's face was beaming.

"This changes nothing,"  Bob grated.

"Come on.  We need to stop the rest of those girl daemons."


to Chapter 25  Divided We Fall