Left alone on top of the tree functioning as his prison for the night, Erik waited impatiently as the seconds crept by.
“Dammit, now that my blood is up I can’t stand the wait!” – He spoke aloud, a maddened gleam creeping into his eyes as he walked back and forth on the platform. Taking in the sight of the massive army surrounding him with a hungry look, akin to a wolf sizing up a flock of sheep before pouncing.
Except that these sheep were armed and very deadly.
Finally, maybe ten minutes since he parted with Xeyope, Erik couldn’t contain himself any longer. Eyes locked on his first target, a small group of Saurus camped directly beneath his tree, Erik let loose a bestial howl and jumped straight down the 100 meter high platform.
“Hraaaaagh!”
Falling down like lethal meteorite Erik came crashing down onto the biggest of the Lizardmen, crushing its skull before it could even register Erik’s arrival.
Not wasting any time, Erik grabbed the cold-blooded warrior’s weapon, a Halberd-like weapon made entirely of a gold coloured metal ending in a spade-like club set with razor-sharp shards of obsidian, and used it to lop off the heads of two more Saurus.
The other Saurus, being literally born and created as the warrior-caste of Lizardmen society, now grasped their weapons as they too let out howls of their own, alerting their surroundings and summoning reinforcements.
A heavy club came swinging at Erik’s head, muscled and scaly tail whipping at his legs and a savage, crocodilian maw threatened to take a bite out of him.
Swinging his newly blooded weapon, Erik knocked away the club before crushing the tail under its weight. Swiftly turning around, he grabbed the protruding, forked tongue and with a yank and a wet squelch, the muscle was torn away from its owner.
By then other members of the army had noticed the commotion and began to move, rising from their fires as they reached for their weapons.
“Haha, time’s running out. Gotta finish these three off and open the Rift.”
A mad grin of pure joy spread his lips as he felt his restless blood come to a boil, the rush of excitement reaching an almost audible crescendo with each swing and the feeling of crushing bone and limb.
Standing over the mangled corpses, Erik had precious little time to enjoy the afterglow of the action. New enemies would come pouring in as an endless tide before long and he needed his wits to call for his own reinforcements. Quickly organising these catalysts, Erik began the summoning as he stood in the middle of the rough circle.
“Blodsdjevel, jeg tilkaller deg til å oppfylle din ed!”
-“Demon of Blood, I summon you to fulfill your oath!”
“Gledens djevel, jeg kaller deg til å oppfylle din ed!”
-“Demon of Pleasure, I summon you to fulfill your oath!”
“Galskapens djevel, jeg tilkaller deg til å oppfylle din ed!”
-“Demon of Madness, I summon you to fulfill your oath!”
“Djevelen av råte, jeg kaller deg til å oppfylle din ed!”
-“Demon of Rot, I summon you to fulfil your oath!”
With the slain Saurus’s souls and their husks as the catalyst, Erik called on his Daemonic contracts, ordering them into the Mortal World along with their forces to wreak havoc in his name.
‘Zuuooom! Boom! Pzzzt, pzzt, BOOM!’
The four souls appeared, ethereal as wisps, before expanding rapidly, stretching tight and then snapping. Immediately, four differently coloured sparks, sparked in place of the destroyed souls before exploding into see-through, mirror-like mirages.
Past the mirrors, carnage, carnality, madness and nausea were insufficient to describe the sights. An endless battlefield where blood literally ran like rivers, an orgy of equal proportions inflicting pain and pleasure in equal measure or at the same time, twisted creatures hunched over lively, twisting tendrils, books or scrolls in a palely lit ‘library’ whilst a putrid swamp stretched as far as the eye could see and showed mountains of decaying filth amidst which bloated bodies lazed about.
Then, the beings within the mirage reacted to the smells and promise of souls coming from Erik’s side of the Rifts and with howls, cries and roars the hordes charged for a chance to come through.
The four commanders tied to Erik were the closest and best prepared, leading their own forces through the fastest, but in the limited time the Rifts remained open, many more Daemons made it through before the soul-power ran out.
Erik could do nothing but sit back and watch as the hordes grew and charged away from the Rifts. No commands were given, nor was there a chance to. In the short time the Rifts were opened, thousands of Daemons pushed through and forced the first arrivals to make room. Which they did willingly by charging towards the converging Lizardmen, Amazons and their beasts.
And as soon as the Rifts evaporated into nothingness, Erik joined the fray as he boldly revealed his Marks for all to see and began his escape in earnest. Charging towards the north, towards the head of the army, accompanied by the Daemons he had unleashed upon the Mortal World.
Chaos sprang from the centre of the camp, and Chaos brought naught but death for the Jungle-dwellers.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Samantha had gathered a small elite force in order to subdue the escapee, maybe 500 Amazon warriors as she ran through her tribe’s camp. But before she had well and set foot into the general army area, she already felt the Chaotic disturbance.
“By Rigg, what did we bring into our midst…” – She lamented as she could feel the Rifts open up and spew forth its Daemons.
But she wasn’t the Chieftain for nothing as she swiftly recovered and gave her orders as she turned to her warriors.
“An army of Daemons is attacking! Sound the alarm! Raise all warriors and inform the other tribes! We must destroy the monsters or risk the doom of us all!”
“Daemons?!” “Chaos found its way into Riggs domain…” “Will we be fine?”
Consternation emerged even among the tribal elites, for none had ever faced a Daemon before. They had fought wild beasts, hunted Old World adventurers and may even have waged war against Lizardmen, but Daemons had not entered the Lustrian Jungle in any meaningful numbers for centuries, possibly millennia, ever since the last great eruption of the Southern Chaos Gate.
Seeing the morale plummet like a stone in water, Samantha did her best to ease their worries as she furiously thought of the next steps.
“We are Amazons! We are the chosen of Rigg, a divine people destined for greatness! Be it Daemon, coldbloods, barbarians or sharp ears, none can best us!
We have a million warriors and a million beasts whilst the enemy is less than 10.000! If we cannot beat them, how can we dare hope to beat the barbarians of Skellige and avenge our defiled Mothers?!”
Her words proved effective as the warriors steeled their resolve at the reminder of their cause. If they fled from 10.000 Daemons, then what about the hundreds of thousands of Norscans at their destination?
“Good! I see you have calmed yourselves! Do not see this as a grand battle, but use it to learn! These monsters, though stronger individually than a barbarian, will act the same! All they know is to attack and to charge, so if we dart in and out whilst scorching them with our Artefacts, we will make sport of them!
Now go, and bring me the Norscan’s head!”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eight feet tall, blue scales and rippling with muscle were the Saurus facing the equally tall, but bright red coloured Bloodletters. From their looks, the monsters would be an equal match but the Daemons had freshly emerged from Khorne’s realm and were still infused by the infernal powers from that dread place.
And thus the drop of red stained the sea of blue scales crimson, feasting on the blood and souls of their victims as they pushed forward.
The purple Daemonettes, enticed by the promise of fresh souls and Mortal flesh, were enraged and felt cheated. For their enemies were naught but Lizardmen and these coldblooded reptiles were found lacking for their desires.
Infused by the unending orgy, they desired strong stimulus in one of two ways, pain or pleasure. And when the latter proved impossible by the Lizardmen’s complete lack of phallus, they instead fell into a deranged frenzy seeking to inflict nothing but pain upon their enemies. Similar to the Bloodletters, they ripped apart the Saurus’s scales with their clawed arms and reaped their souls, at least finding joy in this act of torture.
The blue and purple Horrors of Tzeentch were having a jolly good time. Stabbing anything that moved with their short, curved daggers and throwing fireballs at every and anything not within stabbing range.
Wherever those fireballs hit, they exploded in fluid drops of flame and rapidly spread across even the humid trees of the jungle, starting thousands of forest fires within a matter of minutes as they smiled, laughed and cackled in their maddened glee.
On the other hand, the Plaguebearers and Nurglings had made their way to the river along which the army had camped and defiled it with their pus, ooze and sickness. Turning the erstwhile pristinely clear water into a vile swamp. Long before the wandering bags of disease came close, the more aquatic members of the Jungle Army were struggling for their lives.
Skinks and Croxigors, one a smaller and sleeker version of the muscular Saurus and the other more akin to a giant, bipedal crocodile the size of a troll or minotaur, who had been resting in the pleasant waters drowned in the now fetid swamp, felt their lungs fill with sickness and became dazed from the toxic vapours. And then the spawn of Nurgle fell upon them, slashing them with their blades, whipping them with barbed tongues or tentacles or spitting powerful acids and melting the Lizardmen, turning them into a part of the corrupted liquid.
Lastly, Erik gleefully massacred his way through the ranks of the Lizardmen army, leaving a crimson path in his wake as he went. Similar to the onslaught of the Cold Ones, he’d been picking up new weapons as he went whenever his current one broke, lost its edge or became too slippery to hold from gore and blood. And regular patches of ash and charcoal marked whenever Burning Head went off cooldown and Erik cast it once more, incinerating everything in its way.
Chopping off a Croxigor’s head, crushing a row of Skinks with a wide sweep or stabbing a broken pole through a Saurus’s guts, Erik made his way through and towards the edge of the army.
‘Get to the edge, out of the fight and escape to the north from there as the Daemons distract the natives.’
That was the plan and he acted accordingly, taking care not to get lost in the joys of battle.
Finally the camp’s edge where the campfires no longer illuminated the darkness of the night came into view. And as he gazed back towards the light and took in the chaos he had brought, he smiled a terrifying smile before disappearing into the night.
See you new year then! have a nice rest
take care and have a wonderful holiday
Any news?