Aef-Grimnir's Trials: Ambushes on the Metal Path
The cave spun around Aef-Grimnir, as the copper bridge formed in front of him. At its end was a a rippling disc of gold, hovering in the air like a curtain dancing in the breeze. The Runefather shouldered his axe, walked along the bridge and plunged through the liquid gold. For a brief moment, he thought he could see an endless river flowing through the aether to then plunge into a waterfall, its waters changing from the colour of quicksilver to that of gold. As quickly as it had come, the vision disappeared to be replaced by a vista of scattered books and fluttering pages, a Pink Horror capering amidst them.
Aef charged forward, by now so used to the splitting of Horrors that he felled the lesser ones as quickly as they emerged from the bubbling remains of their former selves. And amidst the embers of the last ones was left a silver nugget engraved with eldritch runes.
While he studied it and recognised it for a Luckstone, heavy volumes started to fly in his direction, as the walking tome he had left back in the cave reappeared. He started for the creature, but was halted by a well aimed book hitting him square on the face.
As his vision cleared, the walking tome fled, the room around it shifting and running like tallow to form a roaring maelstrom. He was whirled off his feet and spun into the ceiling with terrible force to then plummet straight into the vortex.
The vison of the waterfall came back, but now he was within it, the golden foam at its end pushing him into a familiar room, the alchemical laboratory he had crossed on the shaded trail to the grotlings' cave. Was he going mad or had the Tower brought him back? Then another Pink Horror came cackling in and all questions were replaced by the joy of combat.
As he felled the last Brimstone Horrors, their flames ignited one of the bubbling pots. As the smoke cleared, he stared onto the eyes of a squeaking skaven. Again, for a brief moment, he wondered whether that was the same assassin he had fought at the crystal junction.
There was no answer, just the clashing of blades as the scurrying figure splitted and reformed at every swing of his axe.
More than once his own flames ignited the volatile fluids bubbling all around, and yet the skaven kept coming at him from all directions. As they were circling each other, Aef reached for the Luckstone and snapped it in two. As he did, he felt its energies guiding his axe to finally cut in twain both forms of the Deathrunner.
He moved quickly to reach the next chamber and found himself wading through the pulsating gullet of a daemonic beast, acids sizzling in every footprint. As he closed up a bend in the fleshy corridor, he found his way barred by a tzaangor.
Even more surprised than the Runefather was, the beastman was slow to react and soon its body was melting in puddle of acid sludge. The vapour rasing from it thickened into a scintillating blue and purple fog. It shredded apart as quickly as it had come, but in its wake were left Kairic acolytes who sprang swiftly to the attack.
Their blades fell as they intoned discording syllables of power and from the spilled blood of Aef-Grimnir emerged a Pink Horror.
The Runefather planted his feet and channeled his ur-gold power to knit his wounds, then felled three acolytes.
The others closed upon him while the Pink Horror doused him in blue flames. He dodged the blades and his own fires repulsed the daemonic ones. Then, he felt his mind clouding as the walking tome staggered into the fleshy corridor.
Still, the Runefather managed to kill the acolytes and made for the familiar. As he grabbed it, a blade sunk into his shoulder as the Pink Horror came screaching at him.
His mind now clear, Aef-Grimnir quickly dealt with the duplicating daemon and pushed through the churning corridor, only to find more acolytes and horrors waiting for him in the next chamber.
They stood between two statues, twisted archetypes of warrior and wizard. For all its strangeness, some hint of nobility still clung to the warrior statue, and beneath its approving gaze Aef-Grimnir felt empowered and quickly cut them down.
Then, with a great shriek, a clutch of scuttlings sprang an ambush on him. Vile nets of sticky strands splattered down from above as the grots burst from hiding.
As Aef-Grimnir slaughtered the grotlings, he still felt the gaze of the warrior statue upon him, bringing whispered secrets about the skills and rituals of the Tower's denizens.
Bolstered by that revelation, the Runefather stepped into the next chamber. Blades spun and twisted on every side as a pair of sorcerous adepts duelled atop rotating columns of metal while another amulet fragment hung in the air between them. Cultists on the edge of the arena bellowed encouragement to the combatants, but their eyes turned to Aef-Grimnir.
In a heat blur as his ur-gold blazed, Aef-Grimnir leapt out of the fighting pit, the spinning blades grazing his shoulders but not slowing him. Three acolytes fell in quick succession, while the remaining ones started to intone their dread invocations.
The Runefather parried a blow aimed at his neck and with his reposte he intoned a counter-word left there by the warrior statue. The build up of magical energies heralding the coming of daemons fizzled out as the acolyte fell to the ground.
Shocked by the duardin knowledge, the remaining adept fumbled, missing his trust. Then Aef's axe came down and with it did the amulet fragment, coming to rest in the splattered blood.
"M'lady?" the voices of the Chamonite seacaptain and his first mate startled Laelanyel back from her fugue. Again she had seen Aef-Grimnir, this time triumphant and increadibly close, yet still kept away by sorcerous barriers she could not breach. It had happen many times, once a vision of the Runefather staring at an elderly aelf on a throne of light, once of him falling through a golden waterfall. They had taken her here, to the Chamon shore of the Ur-River and she knew where they were pointing her to. It was on the mouth of every sellsword.
"Yes, gentlemen", the Mistweaver Saih recovered her composure. "Passage for me and my people through the Catarhactes, heading for Iscarion. We pay in gold." At these words, the Fyreslayer at her side tossed a heavy satchel to the first mate.
"Aye, M'lady! We sail at dawn".
The Thief of Wits split consciousness rejoined within his chamber. Everything was nearly in place, but he could indulge himself one more time playing with Aef-Grimnir.
Aef-Grimnir's Trials: The Shaded Trail
As the daemons' blades fell on Aef-Grimnir, a terrible roar arose as the ground fell away beneath his feet. A hungry maelstrom of darkness swallowed him up. But this was not the end, for the vortex was in truth a passage through the aether. It spat the Runefather unceremoniously to the ground at the beginning of another of the Gaunt Summoner's insidious trials.
And while light had been blinding during the previous one, now darkness and mists surrounded Aef-Grimnir. They felt familiar, as if the Fyreslayer was back into his home Realm of Ulgu. Peering through the murk, he made out a corridor stretching forward, an unclean thing of metal and tentacular flesh squirming over its floor and two frenzied tzaangor barring his path.
Aef-Grimnir grinned, charged forward and fell one. As the second hacked at him, blinding light engulfed them. For a span of time that might have been seconds or centuries, he hang in the eerie void. Then reality sprang back upon him, and Aef-Grimnir found himself far from the beastman, an avian homunculus standing in front of it.
"I have a riddle for you!" it screamed.
The duardin barged over the homunculus and laid about the tzaangor. Then, in the flurry of loose feathers, he spotted a piece of parchment inscribed with sorcerous sigils. He tucked it into his belt and made for the door at the end of the corridor.
Another tzaangor sprang forth from it, a bunch of screaching Grotlings cheering it. Aef drew on the power of his ur-gold runes and waded through them. As his great axe lopped limbs left and right, the scroll at his belt burst into a sorcerous shield that kept him safe.
Peering into the next chamber, the Runefather saw a Blue Horror mixing potions that bubbled and popped, filling the air with a reek both sweet and acrid. He charged in, cutting the Blue Horror and the Brimstone Horrors that replaced it down in quick succession. But then two acolytes sprung up at his back.
Grinding his teeth in pain, he turned and smashed down one, just as the avian homunculus came back.
"Riddles! Riddles! Answer you must!"
Aef roared in frustration, ducking under the sword of the acolyte to kick away the annoying creature before finishing his opponent.
As he was catching his breath, he saw the homunculus rush into a gloomy cave and climb atop a rock pillar to call forth reinforcements.
"Answer the riddle or die!"
The Runefather had had enough of it and trailing flames he slammed onto the tzaangor. As they fought, the high pitched voice of the homunculus came down from the pillar.
"More craven than Sigmar, more glorious than Tzeentch. The fearless fear it, the cowardly take solace in it and should you eat it, you will surely die. What is it? What is it?"
As the tzaangor finally laid at his feet, Aef-Grimnir turned to the homunculus peering from the pillar, throwing stones and shouting.
"You, blasted blighter!"
"No, no, no! It's not me! It's NOTHING! What poor company you are! SQUAAAAAWK!!!!!"
As its screech echoed within the cave, the shadows thickened around Aef, malevolent eyes glinting within it with murderous intent.
The Runefather saw the skaven assassin approaching and tried to put some distance between them, smashing a grotling against a luridly bright crystal whose light somehow sapped him of his strength. And then the Deathrunner was upon him.
Aef-Grimnir blazed bright as the skaven split in two, vicious blades coming down on him. Everytime the Runefather hit one of the black shapes they merged again, just to split once more. But with his back against the wall, he was denying them a crucial advantage. Then a disgusting smell filled the air as a gleaming fish walked out of a portal.
Gasping and gagging, Aef hacked about, careless of which of the two skaven he was hitting. Dozens of small wounds burned with the poison of the assassin's blades. And yet, the Runefather held on, finally landing a telling blow on the true Deathrunner. He then managed to stomp on the tail of the stinking fish and pin it in place.
"Mercy! Mercy!" it blurted.
"Which way out of this cursed place? There's two portals and I've seen enough to know only one is leading out".
"The far one! The far one!"
Aef-Grimnir let the creature go and started for the far portal. But suddenly, the floor seemed to fall away, crumbling into an unknowable void of swirling nothingness.
Every step became an agony and it took him what seemed ages to reach the door. In that moment, the air resounded with a cacophony of daemonic voices. The fires of change lept high, then guttered out to leave a capering horror in their wake. In a rush of multi-coloured smoke it was upon Aef-Grimnir.
Daemonic icor and lurid flames blotted the walls and floor around the Runefather as he once again battled the demented Horrors of Tzeentch, their bodies splitting and reforming until only a scattering of embers was left.
Free of the cackling daemons, Aef-Grimnir peered through the portal into an enormous cave, its walls and ceiling crawling with grotling scuttlers. At this sight, the Runefather grinned with pleasure. If nothing else, these were foes of flesh and blood. And the kind he had killed in droves since he was but a boisterous Runeson.
Letting out a joyous warcry and drawing upon the power of his ur-gold, Aef-Grimnir charged. In his berzerker fury he felled a score of grotling. Still, though twitching corpses were heaped on all sides, more shrieking scuttlings surged in to attack. Those too, fell to the Runefather's great axe.
And yet, more came, spitting their web and holding Aef long enough to surround him. And as he fought to break from the trap, a mighty gong chimed, a golden gargoyle thrusting its face through the ceiling to spit out a wounded figure that lay like a rag doll onto the cave's floor.
When a sorcerous tome walked to his side, the Runefather felt much of his skills being drained away. He pushed away from it, and though he felled more of them, the grotlings kept him from reaching the dying warrior.
Then another wave came upon him, just as the screaming of tzaangors lured by the bloodshed rung loud through the shadows and fog.
Again, Aef-Grimnir drew on the power of his dead god. The tzaangor emerged from the darkness to find its way barred by the scared grots retreating to shoot with their crooked bows.
In that brief moment of respite, he perceived a beckoning figure within a nearby portal. Seized by the compulsion to obey, Aef stumbled helpless toward the portal.
Within the portal's mirror sheen he seemed to distinguish the features of an elderly aelf sat on a throne of light. Then he halted as the power of ur-gold dispelled the glamour and he turned back to the grotlings, killing as many as he could while keeping away from the frenzied tzaangor.
The disgusting smell of rotten fish filled his nostrils again as the weird creature slithered out of a crack, somehow giving speed to the tzaangor and grotlings that closed on him.
Aef-Grimnir roared once more, sparks scattering around as he dispatched the vile creatures and then rounded up the familiars. Squealing and sobbing, they tossed a piece of a broken amulet inscribed with the rune of Ulgu at his feet.
"Brave warriors deserve a great prize", intoned the walking tome.
In his chamber, the Thief of Wits chuckled with glee. The seed had been planted into the Runefather's mind. Now it was just a matter of putting him onto the path to the Prime Dominion. A path that went through Chamon. With a flicker of his fingers, the Gaunt Summoner moulded his Silver Tower, a slender bridge of elaboretely worked copper arcing in front of Aef-Grimnir.
