The icy mist of Kislev bit into the skin, a bite far more treacherous and wet than the dry cold of the World's Edge Mountains. Here, the air smelled of frozen mud, the rot of distant marshes, and fear. Sigdir quickened his pace, his fur-lined boots crunching through the crust of dirty snow with a familiar sound. Though he walked with the heavy assurance of a Dwarf, his frame was too tall, too slender for one of their kind.
His hair, a pale, almost white blond, was braided in a complicated Nordic style, but held fast by forged metal rings of Dwarf make. Beneath his fur cloak, a well-maintained mail shirt protected his torso, and at his belt hung a powerful warhammer, "Stone-Word," its haft engraved with runes of solidity. On his back, a longsword, simple and effective, was strapped in its scabbard. A human's weapon, for a body that was not entirely human.
Sigdir Leiffson. Son of Leif, said the few who knew him. But Leif was not his father. His real father was a mystery, an Elven shadow his mother, a Nordic woman from the north of the Empire, had fled before dying in childbirth. His mother, another shadow. He had been found, screaming and alone, by an exceptional couple of vagabond Dwarfs: Bordin Bronzebeard and his wife, Drifa Stonehand.
They had raised him as one of their own on their travels. They had taught him the value of steel, the weight of a sworn oath, the melancholy of long memories, and the anger against all things clawed, green, and Chaotic. They had taught him to fight, to smith, and to honour the ancestors. Their ancestors. For his own were unknown.
But there was another layer to this strange inheritance, a layer Sigdir kept secret in the deepest part of his soul. Sometimes, in his dreams, he was not Sigdir. He was Marcus, a man from an unimaginable world, where there was no magic nor bloodthirsty gods, but a chaos just as deadly made of gunpowder and steel. A mercenary who had seen too many battlefields, too much death. An old and weary soul, who had fallen asleep in the smoke of an earthly battlefield only to wake up screaming in the body of an infant in the Old World.
This ancient wisdom, this weariness, mingled with the physical strength inherited from his Nordic blood and the rigorous training of the Dwarfs. It made him a being strangely calm in the heart of the storm, a rock of cool-headedness where others gave in to panic or fury.
His step froze suddenly. He raised a leather-gloved hand, and behind him, the small merchant convoy he was escorting stopped dead, the men gripping their weapons nervously.
"Master Dwarf? What is it?" whispered the caravan master, a portly Empire man named Heintz.
Sigdir ignored the misnomer. "Silence," he grumbled, his voice deeper than a human's, without reaching the rocky bass of a Dwarf.
He listened. The wind whistled through the skeletal pines. Then he heard it again. A moan. Not an animal. Human. Or nearly so. And with it, a faint, metallic smell that stabbed his nostrils and made the hair on his neck stand on end. A smell he knew well, a smell Marcus had encountered in very real nightmares: the stench of Chaos.
He drew Stone-Word in one fluid motion. "Stay here. Keep the circle. If I am not back before the north star is above that pine, continue on your way and pray for your souls."
Without waiting for a reply, he plunged into the woods, moving with surprising stealth for a man of his size and armor. Marcus's wisdom guided his steps, avoiding dead branches, choosing his footing. Sigdir's strength carried the weight of the equipment without effort.
He found the source of the moan in a clearing. The scene was a recent massacre. An overturned wagon, its team of horses gutted. Two torn-apart bodies of men lay near the debris. And in the center, kneeling, a third man… or what was left of him. His skin was mottled blue and purple, and horned excrescences were beginning to pierce his skull. He moaned, not in pain, but with a voracious, unnatural hunger. At his feet lay a woman, still alive, her eyes blank with terror, one hand on her swollen, pregnant belly.
The Mark of Chaos. Mutation.
The old soul of Marcus saw the full horror of the eternal war against corruption. The Nordic heart of Sigdir filled with a cold, implacable anger. His Dwarf upbringing whispered the only possible verdict.
The mutant looked up. Its eyes were now just pools of shadow oozing pus. It opened its mouth to utter a curse in a language that twisted the very air.
Sigdir did not give it the time.
He did not charge with a battle cry. He advanced, like a glacier, inexorable. The mutant rushed him, its fingers transforming into claws. A hammer blow, precise and crushing, shattered the creature's right arm with a dry crack. The creature screamed, a sound with nothing human in it. Sigdir sidestepped a claw swipe from the other hand, the tip of his sharp sword flashing out to sever the tendons.
He fought without loud hatred, but with absolute determination. It was a task to be done. A stain to be cleansed. A promise made to his Dwarf parents: to protect the ordered world from the madness of Chaos.
The mutant, dying, tried to rise. Sigdir raised Stone-Word.
"For the Ancestors you have insulted," he murmured, his voice a low rumble. "For the natural world you defile,"added Marcus's wisdom within him. The hammer fell,ending the creature's misery with brutal efficiency.
Silence fell again, heavier than before. Sigdir wiped his hammer on the clean snow before sheathing it. He approached the woman. She was breathing faintly, her glassy eyes fixed on the sky. He saw the wound on her belly. The corruption had already begun its work. Sadness, an emotion he had mastered long ago, washed over him. A deep, ancient sadness.
He knelt beside her, placing a rough hand on her forehead.
"I am sorry," he said, in hesitant Kislevian. "I can do nothing for you. But I can offer you a peaceful end. Away from... that."
His fingers found the small vial hanging from his neck. A gift from Drifa. "Stone's Grace," a fast and painless Dwarf poison, reserved for hopeless situations. A drop between the woman's lips. A final breath, a gaze that seemed to find a fragment of peace, then she fell still.
Sigdir made a sign over his chest, a gesture from Marcus that had persisted. Then he set about the dark task of gathering wood for a funeral pyre. He could not leave the bodies here, for fear the corruption would spread or scavengers would feed on them.
As he worked, his eye was caught by an object near the wagon. A pendant, miraculously intact, fallen from the woman. He picked it up. It was made of silvery metal, wrought with a fineness he had only seen in the most ancient Elven treasures. It depicted a stylized tree under a single star.
An Eltharin symbol. The language of the Elves.
His own symbol? That of his unknown father? His heart beat faster, a mix of fascination and the aversion inherited from his Dwarf culture.
He clenched the pendant in his hand, the cold metal against his warm palm. The hammer of his Dwarf heritage. The sword of his mercenary life. And now, the echo of an Elven origin he had always dreaded.
The road ahead was no longer just a path through Kislev. It was the beginning of a quest. To understand where he came from. And to decide who—Sigdir, Marcus, the Norscan, or the Elf—would determine his destiny in this war-torn world.
He looked north, towards the wild and dark lands. Somewhere out there, were answers. And he would find them, with his hammer, his sword, and the cold wisdom of a soul that had already known too many wars.