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.
 
 
 	II

 	Sibilatus: the howling mountain, magmahold of the Drunbhor lodge. Vrindum had dedicated his life to its defence, and it was a wonder worth defending. It shouldered high above its neighbouring peaks, a hulking, titanic skeleton turned to granite, crouched and brooding over the leagues before it. The skull took the full brunt of the wind that blew over the Evercry. 
 	The night of the coming of the storm, Vrindum stood deep in the orbit of the skull’s left eye. He was a mote in the vast opening. The rounded roof was hundreds of feet above him. The wind hit him as it surged through the tunnel, roaring with all the strength built over the uncounted leagues from its legend-shrouded origin. It rushed in through the gaps in the ribs, and through the openings of porous bones. The entrances to the caves of Sibilatus numbered in the thousands. Where Vrindum stood, the voice of the wind was a deep, animal bass. Entwined with it were the higher notes of the ringing through tunnels long and short, wide and thin, straight and twisting. Sibilatus was a single great instrument, and the wind played it, creating a song of many harmonies. Vrindum revelled in the strength of the howling mountain. As he did every night, he rededicated his life to its defence. He spread his arms and welcomed the power of its booming, ever-changing hymn. 
 	The songs of Sibilatus accompanied the retelling of sagas, the revels of feasts, and the thunder of war. He knew them all.
 	Then came the storm.
 	In a single moment, all variation ceased. The song became a simple one. It was an immense cry. A war horn bigger than worlds sounded three notes over and over. Vrindum staggered under its blow. Silver lightning exploded beyond the horizon. It streaked to earth as if the stars themselves were coming to wage war. This was lightning such as Vrindum had never seen before. The light was both more pure and more savage than that of any storm.
 	Such portents. Such omens. He stared. He could not fathom what he heard and saw.
 	A new thunder sounded beyond the portal to the cavern. It was the runefather’s voice, extraordinary in its power, as if it were drawing strength from the storm. 
 	‘Bear witness, fellow Drunbhor!’ Beregthor called. ‘Look to the west, and see the hand of fate itself! See the workings of prophecy! Bear witness! Bear witness!’
 	The runefather’s command was taken up and passed through all the tunnels and chambers of Sibilatus. The Drunbhor climbed to the heights of the magmahold. In the socket of that vast eye, Vrindum was soon no longer alone. There were hundreds of Fyreslayers with him, and thousands more wherever there was an aperture giving on to the eruption of the heavens.
 	The horizon flashed with new war. The entire Drunbhor lodge bore witness.
 	All eyes looked west, and so they did not see the enemy.
 
 
 	III

 	The flamers danced, the grasses burned and clutched, and the forest drew near. Vrindum thought of it as a forest because there was no other word he could find for it. The silhouettes of the tall, swaying trunks were swollen with large, tumorous shapes. There was no foliage, though there appeared to be branches. They coiled and gestured, summoning the Drunbhor to their darkness. Over the three-note song of the wind came a rasping sound. Vrindum thought of the rubbing of rough, horned flesh. A scent like foul, piercing incense wafted over the fyrds.
 	Vrindum drew level with Krasnak. The magmadroth slashed at the hungry grasses before each step. The great beast bore the scars of burns. So did the runefather. He looked down from his throne and smiled at his old comrade. ‘Are my sons full of doubt?’
 	Vrindum nodded.
 	‘Will Frethnir challenge me?’
 	‘He wrestles with the decision. Why did you not answer him when he called to you?’
 	Beregthor laughed. ‘What need?’ He pointed the Keeper of Roads, his latchkey grandaxe, towards the tortured shapes ahead of them. ‘Is that a fit destination for our quest? My sons need more faith.’
 	‘Frethnir does not speak against you.’
 	‘Loyal but troubled, is he?’ Beregthor chuckled.
 	Vrindum saw little cause for amusement, but the runefather had been in high spirits since the first night of the storm. Even as the Voidfire gnawed at the ranks of the Drunbhor, Beregthor remained transported by the purpose of his quest. 
 	A flamer twisted close, almost within reach, then moved away as throwing axes flew in its direction.
 	‘And what do you think, Vrindum?’ Beregthor asked.
 	‘That I march where you march.’
 	Beregthor laughed again. It was a great laugh, deep and strong. It shook Beregthor’s entire frame. ‘That much I can see, and I am grateful, as always, for your comradeship.’ He turned serious. ‘We are not alone in our purpose. Other lodges are on this journey.’
 	Vrindum frowned. ‘Have there been messages?’ He did not know how this was possible.
 	‘No.’ Beregthor rose in the throne once more as Krasnak took them through a burst of flame. ‘That is the prophecy. A new age dawns! It is full of change and war! Grimnir calls to all Fyreslayers, and we must answer!’
 	Vrindum wondered at this. Beregthor claimed his knowledge came from seeing a prophecy fulfilled, but it was a prophecy known only to him. Not even Runemaster Trumnir had heard of it before.
 	‘Tell me,’ said Beregthor, ‘do you believe in our journey? Do you believe in the reason we march?’
 	‘I believe that what happened at the magmahold had meaning, runefather.’
 	Of that, at least, he was certain.
 
 
 	IV

 	What happened at the magmahold…
 	They were all looking west, at the storm and the portents. They let their guard down. They were not looking inward. They did not see the enemy until almost too late.
 	With a cry of rage, Vrindum leapt from the gallery surrounding the Chamber of the Gate. He came down in the centre of the cave, on the very dais of the Drunbhor’s realmgate itself. He landed on the back of a raving priest, shattering his spine. He swung Darkbane in great arcs, left then right, its dual blades chopping down the corrupted warriors of the Changer of the Ways. The two long braids of his beard whipped about his head. Limbs and skulls flew. Blood fountained, drenching Vrindum in the death of the invaders. 
 	Hearthguard berzerkers stormed in through the four entrances of the chamber. They hacked their way deep into the horde. They brought brutal punishment to the foe that had dared trespass so deep into Sibilatus. None would escape alive.
 	But they should never have come this far. 
 	Anger and shame battled in Vrindum’s breast. The chamber, deep in the heart of the magmahold, in the roots of the Whistling Mountain, was closely guarded, though it had not been used in centuries. He did not know how the invaders had learned of its existence, or of its location, or how they had reached it undetected. What mattered was that they had done so, and that they tainted the sacred ground of Sibilatus with their presence. The incursion dishonoured all the karls of the Drunbhor. If Vrindum killed all the wretches with his own hands, the fact that they had been here at all could never be forgotten, the taint never washed away.
 	Vrindum’s fury redoubled. He laid waste to the corrupted. He stood in the midst of a rising pile of corpses. If any of the attackers survived long enough to strike him, he did not feel the blows. He saw only their blood, and there was not enough of it. He would have more and more, until the foe was drowning in it. 
 	The attacking force was a strong one. There were raving, self-mutilating worshippers of Tzeentch, eager to sacrifice themselves for their god. But with them were true champions, Chaos warriors in full armour, the plate distorted with twisting spikes and runes of madness. They fought hard against the Fyreslayers, and they fought well. 
 	They died all the same. A towering warrior reared up before Vrindum, wielding a black, saw-toothed blade. Vrindum smashed the knight’s blow aside hard enough to shatter the sword. He brought his axe around and slammed it into the warrior’s helm, cleaving it and the skull beneath in two. 
 	And there were daemons. Flamers of Tzeentch; hopping, twisting whirlwinds of flesh. Spellfire gouted from their snaking limbs. Vrindum’s anger had him on the edge of a killing frenzy, but he retained enough awareness to see there was strategy in the enemy’s assault. The debased mortals and the Chaos warriors formed a wedge around the daemons. They took the brunt of the Fyreslayers’ counter-attack. The broadaxes of the hearthguard berzerkers cut through the bodies of the cultists, then clashed against the armour and blades of the warriors. The glorious fire of duardin rage battered the darkness. Ancient armour shattered under the blows of the berzerkers. Their columns punched into the ranks of the Chaos warriors, but the hulking champions of ruin held the line, slowing the berzerkers with their own wrath and sacrifice. The flamers ignored the Drunbhor. All of their attention was focused on the gate. They trained their spectral flames on the stone pillars of its archway. The wards of the gate flashed, lashing out with purging lightning, reducing one of the daemons to ash. The others paid no notice. They continued their attack. 
 	Sacred stone began to squirm. Portions softened, turning to flesh. A Chaos warrior hurled an axe at the flesh even as Vrindum brought him down, choosing to harm the gate rather than save himself. The thrown axe cut deep into the newly created muscle. The gate began to bleed.
 	The base of one of the pillars turned to glass.
 	Vrindum barrelled into yet another knight, sending the warrior flying out of his way. He roared at the flamer beyond – the one changing the pillar into crystalline brittleness – and plunged his greataxe into the daemon creature. The flamer would have shrugged off the blow of an ordinary weapon, but this was Darkbane, wielded by the grimwrath berzerker of the Drunbhor lodge. There was nothing ordinary about the blow. Stricken, the flamer unleashed a maddened, otherworldly howl. Vrindum’s ears bled at the sound. Darkbane was buried deep in the daemon’s core. He leaned on the shaft and the blade descended further, then the being exploded. Dissipating sorcery washed over him, and his flesh writhed in its wake, but he was stronger than the wave of change. 
 	Two more knights rushed him as he turned to attack the next flamer, but it was too late. Glass shattered. Flesh tore. The pillars of the gate fell. 
 	From the dying gate came a scream of sorcerous light that filled the chamber. 
 	Many of the invaders were destroyed along with the gate. The few who survived were slaughtered by the wrathful Fyreslayers. The incursion was over, but it had served its purpose. 
 	‘They did not seek to seize the gate,’ Vrindum told Beregthor as the runefather walked through the wreckage of the chamber. ‘They came to destroy it.’
 	Beregthor nodded absently, deep in thought. After several long moments, he said, ‘They had reason to destroy it. The storm has given them urgency. They would prevent us from fulfilling our duty. All they have done is ensure that we will.’
 	‘I don’t understand,’ Vrindum said.
 	Beregthor smiled.
 	Then, for the first time, he spoke of the other lodge.
 	In the days that followed, as preparations were made for the great march the runefather commanded, he said much about the lodge. How its magmahold had lain a long, but not impossible, journey beyond the other side of the lost gate. How in ages past, the Drunbhor had left that lodge to travel the realms and had come to Sibilatus. How the great storm portended a union of the two lodges in battle against Chaos. How the song of the wind, now unchanging, was the call to the Drunbhor, the call to march to that union. How the incursion had only made clear the necessity of this quest.
 	‘This prophecy…’ Runemaster Trumnir began when the council met.
 	‘Passes from runefather to runefather,’ Beregthor told him. ‘It is the memory of our lineage.’
 	‘But the gate is destroyed,’ Frethnir said. ‘Our way is closed.’
 	‘There is another gate,’ said Beregthor.
 	Again, Trumnir looked surprised. The runemaster’s beard and hair were streaked with lightning strokes of iron grey. He was older than Beregthor. That he had not known such secrets stunned him perhaps even more than the other Drunbhor.
 	Beregthor raised the grandaxe. ‘The gate is locked. It will open only to the Keeper of Roads. We must seek it where the wind is born. We march to the Typhornas Mountains.’
 	Mountains of lore. Mountains from the oldest stories of the Drunbhor. 
 	A quest for a myth within myths. That was when Vrindum saw the first shadows of doubt and unease on Frethnir’s face. 
 	‘How will we find them?’ the runeson asked.
 	‘By answering the call of the wind,’ said Beregthor. ‘It summons us to the west.’
 	Towards the storm.
 
 
 	V

 	The ground began to slope upwards where the Voidfire Plain ended at the forest of monsters. The smell of incense was overwhelming. It clawed at Vrindum’s lungs when he breathed. The Drunbhor left the grasses behind and passed between trunks swollen with bulbous growths. Their texture was patterns of shifting, spiralling whorls. Their colours varied from deep flesh-pink to the blue of bruises, and the shades changed from one moment to the next. To gaze on a single plant was to be confused by an ever-shifting pattern of colour and movement. 
 	The limbs of the plants were long, thin and serpentine, reaching across the space between them to tangle with each other. It was impossible to tell where the branch of one plant ended and that of another began, as the limbs rubbed against one another, creating a susurrus of muttered truths and shapeless words. They seemed to gesture towards the Drunbhor, calling them deeper into the woods of madness.
 	‘Be vigilant, fyrds of the Drunbhor,’ Beregthor called.
 	Clusters of spines curled out from the trunks and branches. Their tips were sharp as blades. 
 	The plants were as tall as fifty feet when they stood straight. Many were coiled like giant ferns or the tentacles of a sea leviathan. Like the flamers on the Voidfire Plain, they danced to the song of the wind. Though each monstrous plant had its own movement independent of all the others, the rhythms of each sway and bow and sinuosity were in time to the sounding of the three notes.
 	Short, long, short. The beats soft, strong, soft. The song never altering, the same notes since the first moment of the storm. The lightning had long since ceased, but the song remained, calling and calling.
 	‘The wind summons us!’ Beregthor said, as he had so many times since the coming of the storm. ‘It calls us to battle!’
 	The dance of the corrupted plants disturbed Vrindum. If the call was to the Drunbhor, why did these unclean growths respond to it?
 	Behind Vrindum, Frethnir said, ‘These creatures sense us.’ Shudders ran up the trunks and along the branches, as though a web had been disturbed. Vrindum eyed their movements carefully, even as he also watched the shadows between their trunks. There was no underbrush in the forest-that-was-not-a-forest, but the plants stood close to one another, and the light was dim. 
 	There were no paths. The Fyreslayers were forced to wend their way between the trunks. The line of their march became twisted. When Vrindum looked back, he could see only the first couple of fyrds behind the runesons. On a column of more than a thousand Drunbhor, if something happened to the leaders or the rearguard, the other end of the host would not know it.
 	If the Voidfire Plain had been no proper place for a Fyreslayer, this was worse yet.
 	‘We are here!’ Vrindum shouted. Let the enemy come at last and meet the edge of his axe. ‘Know us and fear us!’
 	Laughter ahead. For a terrible moment, Vrindum thought it came from the runefather. Then he realized it emanated from a cluster of trunks a score of paces further on. As one, when the wind’s long note sounded, the growths on the trunks bulged, deep pink and shining. There was a wet tearing noise. The tumours grew arms and horns. They pulled away from the trunks, glistening with mucus. Newly born and ready for war, the pink horrors dropped to the ground. They were heavy, squat, horned things, some with three limbs, some four, some five. All had huge, gaping jaws. Their flesh was the colour of exposed muscle.
 	Bramnor answered the daemons with laughter of his own, angry yet eager. 
 	‘Finally!’ he roared. ‘A proper fight.’
 	The rumble of voices along the Drunbhor column echoed Bramnor’s words. Drethor and Frethnir added their voices to the clamour. Bramnor was the brashest of the runesons, but all were hungry to inflict true punishment on the enemy after the grinding losses of the Voidfire.
 	‘Guard the flanks!’ Beregthor commanded, even as Krasnak charged with him towards the immediate threat.
 	The hearthguard and vulkite berzerkers aimed their weapons to the sides. The column moved forward, its edges sharp.
 	The daemons rushed at Beregthor, Vrindum and the runesons. A moment later, more of the pink horrors burst from the trunks on either side, falling to the ground with fat thuds, a rain of monstrous fruit. And as the daemons surrounded the Drunbhor, the plants attacked too. Their true nature was now clear; they were daemons of the same ilk fused and melded into each other, their limbs distorted and stretched into branches, their horns turned into the spines. Flexing, grasping, the conglomerations of daemons were even more like tentacles now, as if the entire forest were the claws of a great fist that now began to close. The huge trunks whipped down, shaking the earth with their impact. The spines lunged for the Fyreslayers.
 	‘Avenge Sibilatus!’ Trumnir cried. ‘Avenge its desecration!’
 	On his magmadroth, Runesmiter Harthum beat the war altar, and down the length of the Fyreslayer line the sigils of ur-gold worked into the warriors’ flesh stirred them to the joyous frenzy of war. The essence of Grimnir awoke in all of them, and would be satisfied with nothing except the utter annihilation of the daemons. Vulkite berzerkers tore into the pink horrors, while the magmadroths slashed at them with great claws and spat streams of flaming bile. In the gap created by the dissolving, burning daemons, the hearthguard berzerkers stormed outward, pushing hard against the daemons, cutting down abominations who dared attack the runefather. The vulkite berserkers advanced on either side, and the more the gibbering creatures attacked, the wider the column became as the Drunbhor met their challenge with a rising tide of fury.
 	Vrindum hurled himself at the daemons seeking to climb the flanks of Krasnak and take down Beregthor. He slammed into them with the force of a battering ram, knocking them back. His blows sank into solid, dense muscle that flowed with the possibility of change. There was no structure of bone. Revulsion fuelled his rage and his violence, and he struck harder yet, severing the flesh completely. It came apart in sticky tendrils. 
 	A cackling daemon opened its maw wide enough to swallow his head, and Vrindum cut it in half with a single blow of Darkbane. The daemon’s laughter turned into a shriek, and then into wails of petulant grief as the two portions of its body shifted to blue and sprouted limbs. The new daemons reached for Vrindum, their gestures both predatory and entreating. They barely had time to come into being and mourn the loss of their greater self. Vrindum already had Darkbane raised again. He brought it down in a diagonal slash. One blow had ended the pink daemon; now one blow destroyed the two blue ones. The onyx blade smashed through Chaos flesh so hard it left a huge cleft in the ground. The daemons vanished mid-howl, their essence erupting then dispersing with a fading echo of a snarl. Vrindum yanked the greataxe from the ground and rounded on more of the foe.
 	Standing high on his throne, a roaring Beregthor battered pink horrors down from Krasnak’s flanks with the Keeper of Roads. He hit the head of one daemon with such force that he squeezed its essence within the cleft of the blade. Then he twisted violently, snapping the head in half. The blue horrors that came into being were flawed, malformed even for daemons, half their heads missing. Beregthor dispatched them quickly, crushing their bodies beneath the weight of the grandaxe.
 	Trunks bent and limbs grasped, but the Fyreslayers concentrated on the daemons not rooted to the ground. The other pink horrors numbered in the hundreds, a horde that would have overwhelmed an army of mere mortals with the sheer monstrosity of its existence. But the Fyreslayers waded into the struggle with eagerness. They were strong, and they were legion. They hacked at the pink horrors and then the squealing blue daemons. The enemy multiplied, then began to dwindle in a matter of seconds.
 	The Drunbhor batted away the probing spines as a mere annoyance. Drethor was bleeding from minor wounds on his face and chest. They were insignificant, barely noticed in the heat of anger and slaughter.
 	The fused horrors reached and stabbed, accumulating wounds, drawing blood. The tips of their horns broke off and left jagged burrs in the flesh of the duardin.
 	As Vrindum sent two more daemons into oblivion, he saw many of his brother Drunbhor now fighting while their arms and necks bristled with spines. Blood poured down their skin, obscuring the fire of the ur-gold. The spines writhed. They whistled. And then, as ever to the rhythm of the wind’s three-note song, a metamorphosis took place. Drethor jerked. He dropped his weapons. He cried out in agony. He arched backwards. He kept bending until his spine cracked to splinters. Still he folded backwards, his hair and beard losing their red, turning pink, turning to flesh. The back of his head fused with his legs. Skin flowed over his face, destroying his identity. His shoulders moved back up through his torso until his arms emerged from the sides of his stomach. His misshapen legs grew longer. The flesh of his midsection tore open, becoming gnashing jaws. Muscle bunched, twisted, flowed and grew horns. 
 	Where Drethor had been, a pink horror stood on his magmadroth’s back. It sank claws and fangs into the back of the beast’s neck. The magmadroth writhed, seeking to dislodge its attacker, but more daemons sprang into being, swarming over it. The enemy’s army grew. The lines of the Fyreslayers became ragged from a new and insidious incursion. The cry that went up was beyond rage. It overflowed with grief and horror.
 	‘Guard yourselves!’ Runemaster Trumnir shouted. ‘Purge yourselves of the foul thorns! Do not despair! Let the fire of Grimnir burn strong and destroy the taint of Chaos.’ He raised his staff high, and holy fire crackled around it. Daemons rushed him, but were held back by the hearthguard berzerkers at his sides long enough for him to complete his summoning and bring the point of the staff down with a blow that shook the earth. A moment later, lava burst from the ground, enveloping an entire cluster of the daemonic trunks. They shrivelled to ash in the molten rock.
 	Vrindum descended further into rage at the sight of his possessed brothers. He moved too fast for any daemon. He was a storm. Darkbane was a blur. He waded through a rain of daemonic ichor. The only clear thought in the whirlwind of his rage was the need to protect the runefather. Beregthor roared his battle fury, seeming in no need of protection. Vrindum broke through a wall of pink horrors to see Beregthor hurl four of them away at once with a mighty stroke of the Keeper of Roads. Their forms shattered and they fell from Krasnak’s back to be trampled to nothing beneath the magmadroth’s claws.
 	‘See our runefather lay waste to the daemon!’ Trumnir commanded. ‘Forward! Cut through the enemy in all his guises! Leave a trail of flame and blood to mark our passage!’
 	Inspired by the voice of the runemaster and sustained in wrath by the drumming of the runesmiter, the Fyreslayers attacked the pink horrors with renewed fervour. The duardin were wary now of the corrupting thorns. They had been made to fight and destroy creatures that had been their brothers, and vengeance was in every blow. The daemons had begun to break through the lines, but now they were hurled back, then hammered and slashed to oblivion. 
 	Beregthor urged Krasnak into a charge, leading the Drunbhor host in a merciless advance. No longer did the Fyreslayers go around the trunks; instead they drove a straight line through the monstrous growths. Though the pink horrors giggled as if they had already won the battle, their laughter ended in squealing and the rending of daemonic flesh. Vrindum ran alongside Krasnak, Darkbane an engine of slaughter. The spirit of Grimnir was strong upon him. The intricate tracery of ur-gold that covered his flesh shone with anger. He lost himself in the charge, and his world became the destruction of the foe. He tore through daemonic flesh and pulsating trunks, unleashing a torrent of ichor and blood. 
 	Then Darkbane swung through air, striking nothing. Vrindum ran forward a few more steps, but there was nothing to kill. He slowed, blinking. The rage faded, and he took in his new surroundings.
 	He had broken through the corrupted forest. The daemons were gone. Ahead, the ground became more rugged. Vrindum saw foothills, and the promise of mountains.
 	He looked up at Beregthor. The runefather seemed exhausted for the first time since the departure from Sibilatus, and more drained than triumphant. His face was set, committed to the path, apparently uninterested in anything except the march toward the goal.
 	And still the wind of the Evercry was constant. Short and long and short, the three notes guiding the Drunbhor to their destiny.
 
 
 	VI

 	The abominable forest was the first day. The first trial. Eight more days followed. For nine days, the Drunbhor fought through a land full of terrible life, corrupted and enslaved to Chaos. After the forest came the swamp. There the ground was a sucking mire, and ropes of flesh tangled the Fyreslayers while screamers of Tzeentch slashed through the air and through the warriors, their shrieks a choir following the song of the wind.
 	On the third day, they came to a land riven with narrow gulleys. When they tried to cross, the gulleys became grinding jaws.
 	On the fourth day, as the land sloped more and more sharply upwards, the ground turned into living glass. It blazed and snarled in the heat of the sun. It broke beneath marching feet without warning, plunging warriors into jagged crevasses, while flamers skittered over the surface. There were many more than on the Voidfire Plain, and they attacked.
 	And so it went, each day a new trial, a gauntlet that chipped away at the army of the Drunbhor, and the goal was not in sight. Vrindum watched Frethnir’s doubts grow and grow. But the battles were ceaseless, and to challenge the runefather would be a shattering blow to the morale of the fyrds. Frethnir could do nothing to arrest what he clearly thought was a path to disaster without being the cause of a worse one. His agony was terrible to see.
 	As he fought, Vrindum muttered prayers to Grimnir. ‘Prove the runefather right,’ he said. ‘Prove him right.’ 
 	Then there was the wind. The song was still the same, but the air grew more foul. The incense of the forest was gone, but what the Drunbhor now breathed was worse. It was thick and humid, the air of open graves and of a fresh battlefield. It was rotten, and it made Vrindum wonder about the song.
 	He spoke about the stench with Beregthor. 
 	‘The forces of Chaos seek to turn us aside,’ the runefather answered. ‘They will not succeed.’
 	Beregthor did not speak with the same fire as he had upon setting out from Sibilatus. His voice was hard, grey, almost a monotone. He did not look at Vrindum. He stared into the distance, as if the invisible goal had thrown a noose around his neck and was slowly pulling him in.
 	On the eighth day, the Drunbhor encountered fungi so huge they formed caves. Bone-white, streaked with red, they sought to dissolve the Fyreslayers with spores. And when at last fyrds hacked and burned their way through the growths, they beheld mountains ahead of them.
 	And so, on the ninth day, the Drunbhor reached the Typhornas Mountains. 
 	The wind was immeasurably worse. It was difficult to breathe. Vrindum regarded the landscape with wonder and suspicion. The lodge had arrived at a place of legend, and it was as the myths described. The mountains breathed; they were the lungs of the Evercry. They expanded and contracted, immense heaving movements visible to the eye, and the ground rose and fell beneath Vrindum’s feet. Yet the sensation was not that of an earthquake. The rocky surface did not crack as it stretched. Individual boulders tumbled down the mountain faces, but there were no avalanches. At the same time, Vrindum did not feel as if he were walking on the body of an immeasurably vast beast. His boot heels rang on stone, and the crags on all sides were jagged, solid, monolithic. They were mountains, not flesh.
 	In and out they breathed, in and out, bellows of such size they sent their endless wind across the breadth of a continent. And the wind was foul. It grew stronger by the hour, until the Drunbhor had to lean forwards, walking into a gale. The three-note song became the shrieking whistle of a mad thing. In the distance, over a bowl in the mountains, lightning flashed. Thunder rumbled from dark, spiralling clouds. This was not the storm the Drunbhor had witnessed from the peaks of Sibilatus. No stars were falling here. There was no explosion as of a war to change the times.
 	The Fyreslayers entered a narrow pass at the coming of night. They struggled through it against the furious wind. The pass ended at the lip of a huge bowl, a circular valley formed by the meeting of eight mountainsides.
 	Silence fell.
 	The wind stopped.
 	The song ceased.
 	For a moment, Vrindum thought he had gone deaf. Not once in all his centuries had he not heard the keening over the Evercry. Then he heard the muttered exclamations of the runemaster. He was not deaf, then; yet still the mountains rose and fell, rose and fell.
 	They rose and fell in silence. There was no breath. Even the stench was gone. It was as if the Fyreslayers stood on a corpse that was unaware of death and continued in its ignorance to move.
 	In the centre of the valley, on a circular dais, was the gate. Vrindum felt a cautious surge of confidence as the Drunbhor host approached their goal. The gate was clearly the kin of the one the daemons had destroyed in Sibilatus; the pillars bore similar engravings, and though many of the runes were mysterious to him, some of them were also in the language of the Fyreslayers.
 	A shout of triumph rose from the exhausted fyrds.
 	The host of the Drunbhor lodge surrounded the wide dais on which the gate stood. Beregthor dismounted from his magmadroth and climbed up. He walked slowly toward the gate, the Keeper of Roads held before him with both hands. Runemaster Trumnir and Runesmiter Harthum walked with him. Vrindum and the runesons followed a few steps behind.
 	‘Runefather,’ Frethnir said, ‘you were right.’ Relief flooded his face. The shadow that had followed him from Sibilatus lifted.
 	Beregthor did not answer. Vrindum watched him carefully. The runefather did not appear to notice he was accompanied. His eyes were fixed on the gate, unblinking. He had said nothing since their arrival, falling silent along with the wind.
 	Trumnir and Runesmiter Harthum examined the pillars. Trumnir frowned. ‘We will have to proceed with caution,’ he said. ‘This gate is warded. I do not recognize all the runes of protection.’
 	‘Nor do I,’ said Harthum. ‘They were not all part of the original construction. If any are triggered, they might destroy the gate. Or worse.’
 	‘A fine end to this quest that would be,’ Bramnor said. ‘To have come this far for nothing.’ He spoke in jest, his impatience jovial now.
 	Frethnir was not pleased. ‘This is our father’s moment of truth,’ he said.
 	Bramnor nodded. ‘You’re right.’ To Beregthor he said, ‘Rune­father, I honour you, and mean no disrespect.’
 	Beregthor still did not respond. He stood before the centre of the gate, motionless except for his head as he looked back and forth along the span of the arch. 
 	Vrindum moved up beside him. Beregthor’s profile seemed eroded. His skin was grey, worn. It was as if his skull were retreating beneath his hair and beard.
 	Something was wrong.
 	‘Runefather?’ Vrindum asked.
 	No response. The eyes dark like coal.
 	Trumnir said, ‘I shall begin.’
 	‘No.’ Beregthor did not raise his voice. He did not need to. His command was so cold.
 	Trumnir stopped in his tracks as if Beregthor had slapped him. His face darkened with anger. Then he looked concerned.
 	‘Runefather,’ Vrindum tried again.
 	Beregthor took a step forward. ‘Leave the gate to me,’ he said. ‘All of you.’ He turned his head to take in the assembly on the dais. ‘I know what needs to be done.’
 	Trumnir and the runesmiter backed away. They, Vrindum and the runesons retreated to the foot of the dais.
 	‘He is not himself,’ Frethnir said.
 	‘Is he unwell?’ Vrindum wondered. ‘He is old, but I would not have thought this journey would exhaust him so.’
 	No, Vrindum thought. This is something more.
 	Beregthor raised the latchkey grandaxe. He began to chant. The words were strange to Vrindum. 
 	He turned to Trumnir. ‘Do you know this ritual?’ he asked.
 	‘I do not.’ Trumnir did not look away from the gate. ‘But the runefather knows what he is doing. Look.’ He pointed to the pillars. Runes glowed, flared white, and then subsided to a dull, magmatic red. ‘He is disarming the wards.’
 	‘Perhaps his father passed down the knowledge of rituals older and more secret than have been granted to us,’ said Harthum. He sounded unconvinced.
 	Ancient power crackled between the pillars. Light and space bent, twisted upon one another, and began to spiral. Reality fractured into a thousand shards, then reassembled itself. The view through the gate took on a definite character, becoming more stable. What was revealed was the interior of a stone chamber.
 	Vrindum saw how this gate and the one in Sibilatus had been mirrors of each other. The Drunbhor’s gate, Beregthor had said, led from the magmahold to a location within reach of the other lodge. This one, a long journey from Sibilatus, led directly to the magmahold of the other lodge. 
 	There was movement in the ranks as the Fyreslayers prepared to march through the gate. Trumnir raised his staff in warning.
 	‘Hold!’ he called. ‘Many of the wards are still active. We cannot cross yet.’
 	Beregthor finished chanting. He made a complex pass with the Keeper of Roads before the gate. The gestures hurt Vrindum’s head to watch. He stared at the runefather, and he did not recognise the Fyreslayer before him. 
 	Beregthor completed the gestures. In the centre of the gate, floating in the air, a large stone keyhole appeared. Beregthor lowered the Keeper and approached it. He made to insert the head of the weapon into the keyhole.
 	The latchkey grandaxe was a symbol. The design of its blade represented the keys to glory. But it was also a true key. It opened the most secret vaults in the magmahold. And now it would open the final lock on the gate.
 	The wards that were still active glowed red. It was a cold colour. Reptilian. Anticipatory. Trumnir was looking at them with alarm. ‘I don’t think…’ he began.
 	Vrindum jumped onto the dais. He ran forward and grasped Beregthor’s shoulder, holding him back before he could place the key in the lock. 
 	‘Runefather,’ he said, ‘the gate is still dangerous. Should we not wait?’
 	Beregthor ignored him. He strained forward. 
 	Vrindum used both arms to restrain him. ‘Beregthor-Grimnir,’ he said, ‘will you not speak to us? Do you know where you are?’
 	Beregthor turned his head to face Vrindum. His eyes had sunken further yet. His skin was turning greyer with every passing moment.
 	On the back of his neck, something wriggled.
 	Vrindum looked closely. There was a small wound just beneath the edge of his helmet. The tip of a daemonic spine protruded from it. At the same moment, Beregthor opened his mouth.
 	The pink horrors had wounded the runefather deeper than anyone realised during the first battle. A thorn had pierced Beregthor’s flesh. It had been embedded in him, controlling him.
 	‘The Runefather bears a daemonic wound!’ Vrindum shouted. 
 	Frethnir leapt forward to help. He had been freed of the pain of doubt, but now an agony a thousandfold worse had fallen on him. He had not acted when there was a chance, and now it was perhaps too late. He tried to reach for the thorn. 
 	Beregthor twisted violently. He broke Vrindum’s grip and smashed the side of the grandaxe against the grimwrath berzerker’s skull, knocking him aside. He caught his son with the return sweep. His mouth was still open. His lips and tongue worked, trying to shape the sounds he was commanded to utter. His eyes widened. They were consumed with mortal horror. His soul struggled to silence the coming word. It failed. His voice ragged as if ripped apart by claws, he shouted a name. He sang a name.
 	‘Kaz’arrath!’
 	Three notes. Short, long, short. Three beats. Soft, strong, soft.
 	Now the wind returned. It exploded from Beregthor’s words with such force it smashed Vrindum flat. The runefather was suddenly the origin of the wind. He was the source of the song that had called the Drunbhor lodge to this place. The three-note refrain resounded across the bowl, echoing against the mountainsides. 
 	Kaz’arrath, Kaz’arrath, Kaz’arrath.
 	A song of triumph. And of summoning.
 	The wind howled the name. It shrieked over the Fyreslayers as if the combined force of the Typhornas Mountains had come to rage through this site. At the edges of the bowl, the growing night thickened. It swirled with dark tendrils, ready to burst. Beregthor kept his feet in the hurricane. He turned back toward the gate, his face slack. 
 	Vrindum propelled himself up and forward. He did not know what would happen if Beregthor used the latchkey, but he did know it must not happen. What he had said to the runefather so many days ago was true: the events at Sibilatus had meaning. Every step of the journey had meaning, and the steps had led to a moment that could only mean ruin. So he threw himself at the hero of the Drunbhor, at the Fyreslayer he had followed his entire life. He would die for Beregthor. Now he attacked.
 	He swung Darkbane, and he howled with grief that he must do so. Filled with sorrow and dread, he was far from losing himself in the vortex of rage. He aimed Darkbane so the sides of the blades struck the shaft of the Keeper of Roads. He knocked it away from the keyhole, then rammed his shoulder into Beregthor. The runefather stumbled from the impact, then turned on Vrindum, his face contorted. Vrindum did not see the righteous anger of the Fyreslayers in his expression. He did not see the sacred fire of Grimnir. He saw only savagery, and a mindless malevolence.
 	Around the dais, the Fyreslayers were in uproar. Their most ferocious warrior was fighting the runefather. The world had lost all sense. Vrindum trusted that Trumnir, Harthum, the runesons and those who were closest could see the distorted, possessed face of Beregthor. But those further away would only be able to see an impossible conflict, the seed of a terrible schism.
 	Kaz’arrath, Kaz’arrath, Kaz’arrath, cried the wind.
 	Beregthor raised the Keeper of Roads over his head and brought it down, aiming for Vrindum’s skull. The grimwrath berzerker dodged to one side. Beregthor was attacking with enormous power but little skill. The Keeper slammed against the dais, lodging itself in stone. Vrindum launched himself at Beregthor again, battering him hard enough to break his hold on the latchkey grandaxe. Beregthor stared at his empty hands, and he howled.
 	Kaz’arrath, Kaz’arrath, Kaz’arrath. Short, long, short. A call. A summons.
 	The summons was answered.
 	The eight passes that formed the passages to the bowl erupted. The night gave birth to a horde of daemons. A legion of pink horrors and flamers cascaded down the slopes. Gales of demented laughter drowned out the cry of the wind. And to the north, striding behind the thousands of its army, a towering daemon appeared. It was winged. It stalked forward on long legs with multiple articulations. Its arms were almost as long, and it carried a staff in the shape of a giant iron key, whose head changed configuration second by second. Its own head was long and beaked, and its eyes blazed with the terrible cold red of the wards on the gate.
 	The arrival of the daemons restored some confidence to the fyrds of the Drunbhor. Here was a clear enemy. Here was a war that must be fought, however daunting the odds. And so the great mass of the vulkite berzerkers advanced in an expanding circle around the dais. They shook the earth too with the stamp of their feet and the thunder of their battlecries. The runesons leapt away from the dais, racing through the ranks in three separate directions to lead from the front. Trumnir took a fourth, while Harthum climbed atop his magmadroth and once again began to hammer out the beat of war.
 	Beregthor and Vrindum were alone on the dais, though Vrindum could feel the eyes of Kaz’arrath fixed upon them.
 	With the great daemon present, and the mirroring of its eyes and the warding runes, he understood what would happen if Beregthor turned the key and opened the way. The Drunbhor would not pass through. The warding would destroy any who tried. But the Keeper of Roads would permit the daemons to pour directly into the other lodge’s magmahold. This was the quest the daemons had goaded the Drunbhor into completing. The daemons had destroyed the gate in Sibilatus so the Drunbhor would seek and open this one, unleashing horror on the kin they had thought to help. 
 	Vrindum stood between the runefather and the Keeper of Roads. Beregthor ran at him, hands extended like claws. Vrindum met his charge. He grappled with him. He pulled a dagger from his belt and stabbed sideways at the back of Beregthor’s neck. He felt the blade slice into flesh. It struck something hard, and he prayed to Grimnir it was the daemonic thorn. 
 	‘Runefather,’ he pleaded. ‘Remember who you are. You are the greatest of the Drunbhor, and we have need of you now!’ He shoved deeper with the knife. Something severed. There was a sudden weakness in Beregthor’s limbs, and Vrindum wrestled him to the ground. 
 	‘Hear the altar of war,’ Vrindum said. ‘Hear the true call. Hear the wrath of Grimnir. Free yourself of the grip of lies.’
 	Harthum must have seen the struggle, for his booming hymn of battle grew louder yet. Vrindum’s frame blazed with the strength of his god. He saw the shine of holy fury in the runes on Bereg­thor’s forehead.
 	The runefather’s eyes cleared. Blackened coals burst into heroic fire once more. Vrindum released him, and Beregthor leapt to his feet. He stared at the gate, and at the Keeper of Roads embedded in the dais. His mouth twisted in anger and grief. He seized the grandaxe.
 	And paused.
 	A wave of grey settled over his features once more. He shook it off with effort. He turned to Vrindum. ‘I hear, old friend. I keep my honour to the last.’ He shuddered, leaning as if his body would unlock the gate if he did not force it away. Then he gave Vrindum a grim smile. 
 	‘Frethnir will lead well,’ he said, and stormed off the dais. His roar parted the ranks of the Fyreslayers. On instinct they made way for their auric runefather. Krasnak bellowed and joined his master. Beregthor climbed his back into the throne for one final time. They drove deep into the gibbering daemonic legions. 
 	Beregthor headed directly for Kaz’arrath. The Lord of Change was halfway across the bowl towards the lines of the Fyreslayers. Beregthor and the magmadroth plunged deeper and deeper into the roiling mass. The runefather’s attack was reckless. It was too fast. He was not leading the Drunbhor. He was leaving them behind.
 	Vrindum raced after him. Beregthor had no intention of surviving. He was intent merely on destroying as many abominations as he could before they overwhelmed him. Vrindum howled a denial to the fates and raced after the runefather. Beregthor would not be forced to make this sacrifice. Vrindum would fight by his side until the last of the daemons had been dispatched to oblivion.
 	The battle rhythm of the runesmiter rang through Vrindum’s being. The voice of Battlesmith Krunmir thundered over the battle, his recitation of the victories of the Drunbhor in harmony with the drumming of the war altar. Ahead, Vrindum saw the overwhelming odds turning against Beregthor. Krasnak mauled the daemons and burned them with bile. The Keeper of Roads rose high before coming down with destructive force. But the pink horrors kept coming, piling up on each other, reaching to drag at the runefather. Flamers closed in on Krasnak, and the magmadroth screeched as their unholy fire washed over his scales. His hide rippled, portions of his body in the first convulsions of change. Vulkite berzerkers were fighting furiously to come to Beregthor’s aid, but the mass of daemons slowed them down. They would not reach him before the sea of nightmares pulled him under.
 	Or before the dreadful author of the tragedy arrived to destroy the runefather utterly.
 	Vrindum’s focus narrowed to the single point of Beregthor’s peril. Everything else vanished in the rage of battle. He tore into the daemons, and he was a force beyond reckoning. His throat unleashed a continuous cry of rage. His ur-gold sigils were molten with Grimnir’s wrath. The god demanded vengeance. Vrindum was that vengeance incarnate.
 	He did not see individual foes. The daemons were an undifferentiated mass that presented itself for the slaughter. Darkbane cut through a sea of daemonic flesh. Pink turned blue, blue vanished in sprays of ichor. Horns and blades slashed at him, but whether they hit or not made no difference. He was the fury of war, and no foul thing would stop him from reaching the runefather.
 	He drew alongside Beregthor, and the proximity of the runefather pulled him back again from complete battle madness. Krasnak had fallen, fighting to the last as his flesh mutated out of control, transforming him into a hill of pulsating scales and crawling parchment. Beregthor had lost his helm. His face and arms were sheathed in his blood, but he fought as if fresh to the battle.
 	‘Go back!’ Beregthor shouted.
 	Vrindum cut a pink horror in two, then destroyed the blue daemons before they uttered their first wail. 
 	‘Come with me, runefather!’ he said. ‘You are restored to us! Your honour does not require your sacrifice!’
 	Beregthor shook his head. He thrust the Keeper of Roads forward through the jaws of a blue horror, exploding the daemon’s head. 
 	‘I cannot return to the gate. If I do, I will bring ruin to us all. But you must. And destroy it.’
 	Ahead, Kaz’arrath was less than a dozen great strides away.
 	‘The gate is lost to us,’ said Beregthor. ‘We must take it from the daemons as they took ours in Sibilatus.’
 	Vrindum hesitated.
 	‘Go!’ Beregthor roared. ‘Your runefather commands it!’
 	With an agonised cry, Vrindum abandoned Beregthor. He turned back. Once more he cut his way through the daemonic horde. Wrath fused with grief. He would have tried to destroy every daemon in the field if not for Beregthor’s desperate order. Several fyrds of vulkite berzerkers were pushing hard to reach the runefather too, and it was not long before Vrindum was in their midst. 
 	‘The gate!’ he said. ‘We are commanded to destroy the gate!’
 	He leapt onto the platform. He raced to the right-hand pillar, thinking only of his duty and not the consequences as he swung Darkbane. With the first blow, a chunk of ancient stone went flying. The vision in the portal shook. And a roar of denial and rage went up across the battlefield.
 	The daemons surged forward, and there was no laughter from the pink horrors now. They howled with desperation. They fell on the Fyreslayers with determination, forcing them back. The Drunbhor were suddenly on the defensive, fighting to keep the daemons from reaching the dais.
 	‘Think you to escape destiny?’
 	The voice was magisterial and filled with venom. Vrindum’s mouth flooded with blood. 
 	‘The book is written. All change is ours. For you there is but the completion of your task,’ Kaz’arrath said. The daemon reached down and grasped Beregthor in a huge claw. It spread its wings, beat the air with them and rose above the fray, moving towards the dais. As it did, it struck downward with its staff, and Fyreslayers by the score died, their bodies twisted into the shape of unholy runes.
 	‘Destroy the gate!’ Beregthor’s cry was monstrous in its pain, a soul making its last stand in terrible combat. 
 	Vrindum renewed his attack on the pillar. Stone flew. The wards blazed in anger, but he was not attempting to cross the threshold. Frethnir and Bramnor joined him. Their blows eroded the strength of the pillars.
 	‘Faster!’ Vrindum shouted. ‘We must end our failures here!’ Kaz’arrath descended on the dais. With a contemptuous gesture, the daemon swept aside the berzerkers who blocked its way. It held Beregthor towards the portal. It could ward the gate and twist its nature, but it could not open it. The runefather of the Drunbhor alone could do that. His body trembling, controlled by a will much greater than his, Beregthor raised the Keeper of the Roads and inserted its blade into the floating keyhole. 
 	Vrindum attacked the pillar with the frenzy of wrath.
 	Beregthor turned the key.
 	The circumference of the portal blazed with lightning. The vision of the magmahold took on depth. The keyhole vanished. With a raucous caw of triumph, still clutching the victim of its manipulations, the Lord of Change stepped forward into the gate.
 	And the pillar collapsed.
 	It toppled like a felled tree, pulling the entire arch of the gate down with it. Runic, warded stonework fell into the portal with the daemon and Beregthor only partway through. The gate exploded. The heart of the Typhornas Mountains flashed with searing violet and silver. The dais erupted.
 	Vrindum hurtled through a maelstrom of fire and stone and raging power. The storm raged, and he raged with it. The fury of reality’s ending battered him. 
 	He bellowed a cry of victory and grief. 
 
 
 	VII

 	The destruction of the gate turned the centre of the bowl into a crater. The blast killed many Drunbhor. The uncontrolled storm of sorcerous energies wreaked even greater devastation on the daemons. With Kaz’arrath gone, they were leaderless and despairing. With Beregthor dead, the Fyreslayers were terrible in their vengeance. 
 	The end came quickly.
 	At dawn, Vrindum stood at the edge of the crater. The wind blowing from the Typhornas Mountains had shaken free of the three-note refrain. The song was changeable once again, varying with every rise and fall of the mountains. It sounded in Vrindum’s ears like a chant of mourning. But perhaps there was a thread of triumph too. Beregthor’s final command had defeated the daemon’s machinations. And he left behind a legacy.
 	As the sun’s rays crossed the lip of the bowl, the veins of gold in the crater gleamed.
 	Frethnir joined Vrindum. ‘The runemaster says there is a rich concentration of ur-gold below,’ he said.
 	‘Beregthor would be pleased,’ said Vrindum. ‘He led us well until the end.’
 	‘He did. I should never have doubted.’
 	Vrindum bent down and picked up the Keeper of Roads. It had survived the explosion, though its blade was gravely scarred. Vrindum presented it to Frethnir. 
 	The runeson shook his head. 
 	‘No,’ he said. ‘That is for Bramnor. It is not for me to be auric runefather of the Drunbhor. My brother will lead the march back. I will stay here with those who choose to join me. We will found a new lodge where our father has brought us.’
 	‘Then I will be of your number,’ Vrindum said. Where the daemon had sought to bring ruin to the Drunbhor, now there would be a greater strength.
 	The wind’s cry grew louder, a martial song for the birth of a new era.