Part 2: Eldanesh - The turning of the tide

Lucius gracefully pulled the sword from the skull of the lizard-like creature. Blood covered his chained right fist from the fight with the larger of the beasts. He remembered having easily blocked it’s great club weapon, but it had immediately rallied and bitten his shoulder. He remembered having been shocked by it’s sudden speed and ferocity, but comforted himself once more by remembering the sound of it’s head hitting the floor after he severed it beautifully from the beasts shoulders. The battle had been hard fought, ambushed on all sides by the smaller lizards with some kind of pipe weapons; they had always been at a disadvantage. Seldan had been particularly impressive, reacting incredibly quickly to the immediate danger and taking the attack to the enemy with so much grace, his spear bringing words of truth from the dark gods to those of cold blood.

But this was not what had worried him. Asalan had reacted much slower to the danger, having stopped still the second blood was spilt. Axe to his side, he stood broiling his anger for so long that he was surrounded by the human sized lizards with almost no chance of living he had seen the rage unleashed in his brother as he killed all before him and a bloodbath that seemed most inelegant, and most certainly involved no sacrifice to Slaanesh. His youngest brother had become more detached than he would have liked in previous months. Searching for their lost father seemed to have taken its toll on him. Many times he had watched as Seldan had walked to him after a ritual and checked if he was alright, but as many times he had been shunned without as much as a word. More worryingly he seemed to be accumulating a horde of trophies from his fallen enemies, quite unlike those taken by the rest of the horde. His mind wandered as a vision entered his mind from his lord and master.

Asalan sat in his makeshift tent looking at the great stone he had brought in to use in his ritual. He had intricately carved his god’s symbol onto its front in a delicate fashion so that it was perfectly symmetrical. He pulled out the trophies of war and laid them out in front of the stone before him. Knowing his brothers would be suspicious after his careless actions in the ambush today he knew he had needed a distraction to have time to finish his ritual.

Seldan walked to his brother after seeing him sit up sharply from what had at first seemed to be sleep. Having left his steed to roam for the night and his armour in his tent, his rippling muscles were apparent as he walked, great spear held in his right hand.

“The message in the vision?” His silky tone of voice was impressive to Lucius and he felt an immense feeling of pride for his brother as he had obviously caught the eye of the Dark Prince in this afternoon’s battle.
“Not good. It’s Asalan. We have a problem…” as he said this it became very apparent that this was in fact the case. A fight that had seemed a casual brawl in the ranks of the marauding northmen had become a large scale fight with weapons and armour held against comrades.  As the first man fell to a gracious sweep of a warriors shield, the two eldest brothers rose uneasily and ran to quell this seeming rebellion.

Asalan smiled as he heard the commotion outside. The money he had paid the marauder would not help him now, he could collect it from the man’s tent when he had the chance. Looking at the bloodied skulls before him, he envisioned the only memory he had of his fathers face and the voice spoke to him once more.

“Follow me, and I will grant you the strength to strike him down like a rat. I showed you a portion of that power today and you will not be disappointed.” The voice was indescribably harsh, full of rage and anger.
“What of my brothers, I cannot kill them” he replied, the first pang of guilt striking him.

“Your brothers are jealous of your strength. They will soon realise you have surpassed them, and will try to stop you. Complete your ritual, favoured one!” The voice had risen in his mind to one of great fiery fury and he knew he had no choice but to do what it asked of him.

Using his great axe to slice his hand delicately, he smeared blood over his face. Placing the axe blade on the stone he began his ritual.

“Ahk, leth Khorne