The scryer chuckled mirthlessly as the next image wavered into being. Another mountain hold, but not one that belonged to the dwarfs. Not any more, at least. In the deep halls and opulently decorated black chambers of the Silver Pinnacle, the self-proclaimed queen of the world, Neferata, mother and mistress of the Lahmian bloodline, led her warriors, both dead and undead, in defence of her citadel. A horde of daemons, backed by hell-forged artillery, attacked from above and below, laying siege to the main gates of Neferata’s chosen eyrie, as well as surging up from its lower depths. But these daemons vanished as abruptly as those who had attacked Copper Mountain. The scryer frowned in annoyance. It would have been far better for his own designs for the mistress of the Silver Pinnacle to have fallen to the daemon-storm. He gestured again, almost petulantly.
What came next returned the smile to his face. The great city on the mount, Middenheim, reeled beneath the tender ministrations of the Maggot King and the Festival of Disease. Pox-scarred victims staggered through the streets, begging for mercy from Shallya and Ulric. The open sores that afflicted them wept a noisome pus and their bodies were thrown on the pyres that marked every square, still crying out uselessly to the gods. How Jerek would have cringed to see that, the scryer thought, as he laughed softly. The image wavered and changed.
His laughter continued as beneath the shadowed branches in the depths of Athel Loren, the great edifices known as the Vaults of Winter shattered, and a horde of cackling, daemonic filth was vomited forth into the sacred glades of Summerstrand. Ancient trees, including the Oak of Ages, cracked and split, expelling floods of maggots and flies, and the forest floor became coated in the stuff of decay. Desolate glades became rallying points for monstrous herds of beastmen, who poured into the depths of the forest, braying and squealing. Amused, the scryer waved a hand, dispelling the image.
His amusement faded as the blood rippled, revealing a scarred face, topped by a massive red crest of grease-stiffened hair. An axe flashed and a beastman reeled back, goatish features twisted in fear and agony. It fell, and the axe followed it, separating its malformed head from its thick neck. The wielder of the axe, a dwarf, kicked the head aside as he trudged on through the fire-blackened streets of a northern city, fallen to madness and ruin. The dwarf, one-eyed and mad, was familiar to the scryer from a past encounter of dubious memory. Snow swirled about the dwarf as he battled through the city, his rune axe encrusted with gore drawn from the bodies of beastmen, trolls, northern marauders and renegades, all of whom lay in heaps and piles in his wake. The scryer saw no sign of the doom-seeker’s human companion, and wondered idly if the man had died. The thought pleased him to no end.
The image billowed and spread as the dwarf trudged on, and the scryer was rewarded by the sight of the River Aver becoming as blood, a scarlet host of howling daemons bursting from its tainted waters en masse to sweep across Averland, burning and butchering every living thing in their path. As with the other daemonic incursions, the bloody host evaporated moments before they reached the walls of Averheim.
Averheim grew faint and bled into the dark bowers of the Drakwald. Trees were uprooted and hurled aside as a veritable fang of stone, taller than the tallest structure ever conceived by man, tore through the corrupted soil and speared towards the sky. The crown of the newborn monolith was wreathed in eldritch lightning. Similar malformed extrusions rose above the tree line of Arden Forest and the glacial fields of far Naggaroth, as well as in the Great Forest and the embattled glades of Athel Loren. Some wept flame, others sweated foulness, but all pulsed with a darkling energy. Beastmen gathered about them to conduct raucous rites, the worst of which caused even a man as hardened to cruelty as the scryer to grimace in repulsion. With a hiss of disgust, he dashed his fingers into the blood, banishing the activities of the beasts from sight and eliciting another image.
Nuln erupted into violence as crowds of baying fanatics and self-flagellating doomsayers filled the streets. The mansions of the wealthy were ransacked and unlucky nobles were hung or torn apart by the screaming crowd. Even the Countess von Liebwitz was dragged from her boudoir, amidst a storm of accusations ranging from adultery to sorcery. The scryer stabbed the swirling blood, dissolving the Countess’s screeching visage and replacing it with the snowy hinterlands of Kislev.
As with Naggaroth, Kislev shuddered beneath the tread of masses of northmen, all moving south. All lands west of Bolgasgrad were awash with daemons and barbarians. Along the River Lynik, the Ice Queen led her remaining warriors in a series of running battles with the invaders. As the Tsarina led her Ungol horsemen against the howling hordes, the scryer stirred the bowl, trying to ignore the murmur of the voice that pressed insistently against his awareness, demanding to be heard.
He was in Bretonnia again, as a figure clad in green armour hurled aside his helm, revealing the features of Gilles Le Breton, lost founder and king of that realm, now found and ready to reclaim his throne. The scryer laughed and wondered what Mallobaude and Arkhan would have to say about that.
He focused on the rippling blood, banishing images of the reborn king, and saw the armies of Ostermark, Talabecland and Hochland clash with a ragged host marching under the banner of the sorcerous monstrosity known as Vilitch the Curseling in the fields and siege ditches before the battlements of Castle von Rauken. Aldebrand Ludenhof, Elector Count of Hochland, mounted the ramparts of the besieged castle and put a long rifle bullet into one of the Curseling’s skulls, forcing the creature to retreat and scattering its host.
The scryer waved a hand. The images were coming faster now, some of them appearing and vanishing before he could properly observe them. His skull ached with the frequency and intensity of the scenes playing out in the bowl.
The hordes of the Northern Wastes did not merely assault the south and west. They went east as well, hurling themselves at the Great Bastion in their thousands. Khazags, Kul and Kurgan mustered daemon engines, and dozens of warlords and chieftains led their warriors against the defences of the Bastion. The smoke of the resulting destruction could be seen as far south as the Border Princes. The image wavered and faded before the scryer could see whether the Bastion had fallen.
In the desiccated deserts of the south, the unbound dead of a long-gone empire readied themselves for invasion, and the chariots of the tomb kings rolled westward, towards the caliphates of Araby. The dwarfs sealed their holds or mobilised for war as the foundations of the world shuddered and long-dormant volcanoes rumbled, belching smoke. In the Badlands, the numberless hordes of greenskins gathered and surged towards the civilised lands as one, as if in response to some unspoken signal. The ogre tribes too were on the march, bulbous bellies rumbling. In the roots of the world, the clans of the skaven scurried upwards, attacking the unprepared nations of Estalia and Tilea in such unprecedented numbers that even the scryer was slightly dumbfounded. City after city fell, and the tattered clan banners of the Under-Empire rose over the lands that had once belonged to men.
Perturbed, he swept out a hand, stirring the blood without touching it. A familiar sight, this one, and his lips peeled back from his teeth in a triumphant snarl. An old man, clad in the robes and armour of the Grand Theogonist of the Empire, wrestled against a dark shape, cloaked in shadow. The shape twisted, becoming first a man – aquiline, noble and yet feral, with eyes like crimson pits and a mouthful of fangs – then swelling to a giant, clad in armour such as no man had ever worn, wreathed in eerie green flame. The giant’s features were fleshless, and its head was a skull bound in black iron and bronze. Skeletal jaws opened wide, bone stretching and billowing impossibly as the giant thrust the struggling shape of the old man between its jaws and swallowed him whole.