With blood in his voice K'Bhunda and his armies bestrode the mortal realms during the Age of Chaos. Until the return of Sigmar and his Stormcast there was nothing in all the Mortal Realms that could even slow the bestial fury of Khorne's marshall. The Bloodthirster burned with the rage of all of his ilk but his was a mind to contain and restrain the fury until it was needed. More than any other of Khorne's children K'Bhunda exemplified the aspect of martial discipline that is an oft overlooked aspect of the Blood God.
So it was with wrath and will that the armies of K'Bhunda struck down each enemy force they came across. The careful planning of each assault was as unrivalled as the daemon himself was in close combat.
And so when the first Stormhost marched to oppose him they were scattered before his skill and savagery.
But they regrouped, they were no foe to be so easily dismissed and they had done real damage to the army of the Bloodthirster.
The second time the two forces met things were different. A strike force of the Vanguard Chamber were thrown directly at the High Marhall of Khorne and while K'Bhunda was distracted by the immediate threat allies of Sigmar's forces appeared behind the armies of the Blood God. The Seraphon tore into the Bloodletters, their mounted knights hitting the massed Blood crushers in the flank. Still all of this was a distraction.
No fewer than five Slaan mage-priests appeared around the enemy general and such was their power that they sealed off the bloodthirster from his followers and, now uninterrupted, they began their work.
The place where K'Bhunda had been brought to heel was not left to chance. A temple of the Blood God was inside the Seraphon's dome and with the essence of Khorne swaddling it the Slaan wove their magic to connect the daemon and the fane. The church was sited near a Realmgate and the Blood God's forces used the portal to spread murder across the Realms. It was this that K'Bhunda believed was the target of the Sigmarite attack.
As the last of the Stormcast were slaughtered by the daemon he turned on the hated magic-users. Three of them would die in quick succession but K'bhunda was too late. As he reached for the third he could feel his being draining away from his form, he became less substantial with each hoof step and each bellow of rage. There was enough fury in him to bury his axe in the third frog-like creature but as he moved towards the fourth he lost more and more of his substance until his entire being was sucked into the church.
The walls exploded out with the energy at the completion of the spell and all that remained was the altar. A blood slicked shrine marked where the daemon was entombed.
With the aid of the two remaining Slaan the Seraphon and Stormcast were able to turn the tide against the remaining daemons and, their leader imprisoned, the Blood God's forces were broken up into small bands and destroyed piecemeal.
The work, while well begun, was not finished.
From the rock faces of the sides of the valley the Stormcast warriors hued stone and carried it to the site of the prison. Slowly, but more quickly than mortals could have done it, wall rose up around the shrine and the Realmgate. The Slaan stayed and used their arcane arts to empower the walls with mighty wards to keep back the forces of the Ruinous Powers.
After placing a garrison in the fortress that had no name, the remaining Stormcast and all the Seraphon departed leaving their comrades behind. Over the years the armour of the defenders had grown dusty with the blown sand of the region but their attention to their duties never flagged.
A tension had grown clear among the watch in the last few months. With time the daemon that they kept in prison diminished in potency as its rage beat impotently against the walls of his cage. Now it was only months before the daemon would cease to exist at all. If the attack they had spent generations expected were ever to come it would be soon.
Then it was that one of the Prosecutors came screaming back from his patrol to announce that a force was approaching the walls.
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The taller of the two Warlord glowered at the other as they gripped each other's forearm. Ghaka had no love for the children of men but he recognized an opportunity to expand the power of his warband when he saw it.
Gar Naghuk held most of the creatures before him in disdain. Only the Chieftain of this tribe of bestial savages deserved his respect. The creature was tall and powerfully built. Beyond his skill as a warrior was his ability to think and plan, rare, perhaps even unique amongst the Beastmen of the Laavsnart Plains of Ghyran. This one would keep his promise, he had not only the wisdom to see the advantage in it but he had the intellect to carry out the plan.
Their pact sealed, the plan understood the two Chaos Warlords joined their followers and went their separate ways.
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The glow of the Realmgate was barely visible in the distance, although it would not have been seen at all from this far away during the day. Lothis' tireless eyes moved scanning the trees, his sensitive ears picking out the different noises of the forest. It was a sound that first caused him to pull back the arrows in his bow.
His eyes trained in the direction the sound had come saw some movement. A small group of Ungors crept through the woods. His first three shots laid three of least of the beastmen on their backs, two dead and one dying.
He moved forward fitting three more arrows to his bow and firing as he ran, each shaft illuminating the forest with the magic contained within it.
A few arrows whizzed past him before he had drawn his bow string again but already the creatures were in retreat.
He could hear more of these foul Children of Chaos and knew that it was too many for him alone to handle. This set had just been scouts.
He fell back and moved towards the post. The guard would need to be called out.
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He just nicked the side of the horse with his spurs as he urged the beast forward. The savage, hairy creatures were just emerging into the clearing as he did so and his men followed him with practiced skill. A bestial howl went up from the creatures. Those in the back were screaming for Elven blood, those in the front were screaming in terror as the light of the Lumineth lance tips caught their eye, growing rapidly bigger.
There was not time to turn around, the cavalry were among them, their lances reaping a heavy toll and soon both cries of fury and terror were reduced to those of pain, where there was breath left to cry at all.
Kivenar turned his horse around slicing down and the wounded creatures when he looked up to see a boulder bounce along the ground and plow into one of his men. The horse was crushed by the stone, the rider's leg caught between the dead beast and the statuary that killed it. The knight would soon be joining his mount.
The Elven cavalry wheeled about to face the new threat when a loud braying behind them made them realize that this was not the only threat.
Caught between a new herd of Beastmen and the Cygor the cavalry stood no chance at all, their dying anguish filled the air as it brightened with the coming dawn.
With tears streaming down her cheeks Siennis caught those dark emotions and reflected them back at the Children of Chaos, the direct emotive force being too much for beings born of the raw aetheric tides of magic. Overwhelmed many took to their heels letting some of the pressure off of the few Elven knights still standing.
The attack struck from every direction now and despite the crudity of their manufacture the ungor's arrows still found their marks in Elven flesh.
The Beastmen had almost penetrated to the Realm Gate, but the stone-like stance of the Elven guard held them just yards away from their goal.
At first almost invisible in the darkness, gauntlets without hands in them moved swords with deadly grace and soon the very elite of the bestial herd were lay bleeding around the Elven position.
The pikemen turned a moment too late, the biggest of the enemy were among them, his axe rising and falling and each time the broken body of a Lumineth warrior bloodied the forest floor.
As the majority of the Lumineth went to stop the rampaging Cygor Ghaka cut his way through the rest of the infantry and only a sorceress bared his way now.
His axe thudded into her even as her lithe form tried to move out of the way. The first blow severed a breast, crushing her rib cage and collapsing a lung. With the upswing a hand flew into the mystical portal behind her and disappeared. The second time the axe fell it smashed through clavicle and scapula and the light drained from Siennis' eyes.
Eltharion was on him then, the Cygor had only fallen to its knees by the time the spirit of the Elven hero had raced to avenge the Cathallar.
The long sword snaked out but only bit into stone as the Beastlord leapt away, but even the savage creature was not a match for the ancient spirit and the shorter sword bit deep into fury muscle and Ghaka fell from the stone steps only inches away from his goal.
The tide of steel and anger slammed into the walls of the fortress, their leader at their head.
The Stormcast responded in kind and the two patrols that were outside of the walls were quickly splattered with the blood of their enemies as their hammers fell smashing the servants of the Ruinous Powers to the ground.
Gar Naghuk smashed through the door baring his way to the shrine of his God his axe carving into the barrier before finally rending reality itself and tearing apart the very material from which it was made.
His triumph was short lived. He was immediately beset by the Stormcast on the other side of the door, quickly wounded by their polearms he raised his axe to strike back only to be felled by three arrows in quick succession, one piercing his heart through his arm pit as he lashed out against those that would bar his way.
With their leader fallen the followers of the Blood God were driven to new levels of fury but it was not enough. They managed to gain a foothold on the wall but it was not enough. They managed to destroy the stromcast sent against them outside the walls but it was not enough.
They had lost too much to accomplish too little.
The Beastmen had failed them on the other side of the Realm Gate.
Battered they fell back, before they would regroup to renew their assault time would run out for K'Bhunda.
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