Age of Sigmar: The War of Blood and Fire

Chapter One

Blood was spilled for the Blood God, and skulls were taken for the Skull Throne.

The Khornate warrior shouted and yelled as he charged, feeling the power of his rage coursing through his body, a living embodiment of his god. Taking his ax, he swung at the spectral apparition that appeared before him, a ghostly figure wreathed in unnatural and sickly green that permeated its dark robes and skeletal face. A Nighthaunt.

Most men would have been afraid, terrified even of the creature so freshly raised from death, but the berserker was not like most men. He had chosen his lot with Khorne, the mightiest of the Choas Gods, a true champion of combat and warfare, unlike that pretender Sigmar!

"I am Kuungar, Blade of Khorne, and even you shall feel that sting of my ax!" he yelled, bellowing from his lungs as he charged mad with war frenzy into the fray of undead appirations. If "Kuungar, Blade of Khorne" had been taught and educated in academies and universities of the urban cities, he might understand that the Nighthaunt, spectral beings in their core, could not be normally harmed by mortals of fear or uncertainty. Theories and proven, if bloody, tests would have revealed to the warrior that only attacks with the driving force of intense emotion behind them could tear through the ectoplasmic body of the Nighthaunt, a rare trait among the common soldier who fell in fear and incoherency before the spectral damned.

But Kuungar was not raised in the soft gardens and homes of the weak-dwelling urbanites. His path followed the way of a true warrior, one who endured in the bitter steppes of the Broken Continent. He followed the way of Khorne offering blood and skulls to his grim-faced god. Kuungar did not feel fear when joining his ax in battle, but rather elation, spilling the blood of others and his own for the god of bloodshed and battle.

Yet there was not blood to be spilled in this battle but his own and that of his companions, fellow Chaos-followers of Khorne. "The dead do not bleed" he had been told, and the Nighthaunt were living, or rather, unliving, examples of this.

A single cut from his ax, ferocious in its nature, cleaved through the spectral form of a chained wrath wielding a horrible scythe, the creature screeching and hissing, but not a drop of pleasing scarlet liquid poured onto the ground. Kuungar yelled and urged his men forward, even as he saw one of them fall to the armada of invading ghosts.

Curse the hated necromancer! Curse Nagash himself for bringing these weaklings onto the battlefield!

Rage boiling under his skin, the huge and lumbering warrior cursed the god of the dead loudly and fiercely, rousing his fellow Khornate worshippers to even greater acts of anger and butchery. Kuungar raised his ax to cut down a Nighthaunt from the sky, shattering it into spiritual ectoplasm to be reformed in the abyss of Shyish. He gripped the two-headed weapon hard, briefly admiring its duardin craftsmanship now stained with skulls and crude blacksmithing to form gapping teeth and metal jaws.

Bloodrinker swung again with fury towards another Nighthaunt warrior, one that charged with large chains toward Kuungar, cutting the specter in half! Blood boiling and spewing forth from nicks and cuts in his body, Kuungar bellowed another great warcry as he charged into the last few Nighthaunt, who floated out of his way except for one unlucky monster that saw its unlife cut short by his weapon.

Kuungar cried out just as quickly, falling to the ground and bleeding profusely from his back. Looking up he saw a terrifying skeletal creature descend upon him, skull open and eyes empty as he reached with spindly bony fingers to drag his soul down to the depths.

For but a moment, a tiny second, Kuungar follower of Khorne and veteran of countless battles, felt true consuming fear in the face of unliving death careening before him...until the Nighthaunt's face was cleaved through by a giant sword and it screamed and splattered into ectoplasmic oblivion!