It was a pleasant day in Lahar. Perhaps not perfect or beautiful, and there was still likely a battle in the days ahead. But the water in the river was clean, the wind was cool, and the forest around Améline was quiet as she knelt beside the running water.
At least no one was trying to kill her.
Améline had found herself ahead of the Skyguard force heading to the Mausoleum. She’d made some excuse about scouting ahead for fresh water, and left the camp. Now that she had found some, she didn’t feel like rushing back to tell her allies yet. The silence felt perfect to counterbalance the thoughts raging through her mind.
In the serenity of this quietly babbling stream, she could almost forget that she might have to cross blades with her friends.
A twig snaps behind her. The feeling of eyes staring at the back of her head creeps over her.
Améline holds back a sigh, and places her helmet back on her head.
Peace never lasted long for her.
She stands up and turns around just in time to catch a figure making a dash for her, two blades readied. Améline lunges out, grabs his wrist and wrenches him forward. As he stumbles she cracks her head down against his. Scavenged steel met sigmarite. The sigmarite won, and the steel shed blood. The man falls to the ground with a gurgle, and she’s able to take a few seconds to study him.
He wears scale armour. A punch-dagger prosthetic in place of a hand. Venom coating the other knife he held. A crest on his helm shaped like a viper, and vials, hanging from his belt.
A Pureblood. Had Améline been slower by just a few seconds, she could very well have died by his poisoned blades.
All of this passes through Améline’s mind quickly and coolly before he pushes himself up on an elbow. He freezes when her gladius is pressed against his neck.
“You’re with the Cult of the Burrowing Fang, aren’t you?” she calmly asks.
“Kill me! It won’t change anything. I will join the faithful fallen in Nagendra’s coils, and rejoice when your veins run with venom eternal!”
“Hrm. You sound like you’re in a cult.”
She reaches out with her free hand and snaps the blade off his prosthetic, then wrenches the dagger from his fist. For good measure, she removes his belt with its vials and places them out of his reach.
“Unfortunately for you, I’m not in the habit of killing my prisoners. You’ll have to join your god another day.”
She cuts the strap of his helmet and removes it from his head. A bloody face looks up at her, a single eye shining with defiance while the other is a burned socket. The wound on his head bleeds profusely, but as far as Améline can tell it isn’t fatal.
Good, she thinks to herself. I have a need for him.
“What is your name?”
He stares up at her, eye roving over her. Studying her for tricks, she assumes.
“Cyrus Fanghand.” he offers, evidently defeated in trying to peer past her armour.
“Cyrus, I’ll let you go if you help me. Otherwise, I’m dragging you back to my camp, and we’ll see if my allies are as lenient as I am towards a spy trying to poison their water supply.”
“My death is a blessed thing compared to betraying Voice-Of-Embers.” Cyrus spits at her, but she can already tell that his resolve is beginning to flag. He isn’t so fanatical as to prefer death over any cooperation, it seems.
“I don’t plan on asking you to do so. I just want answers.”
She lowers her blade from Cyrus’ neck.
“Where is…”
“Khelyra!”
Améline charges forward, feet stomping through mud and blood. A kroxigor stands in her path, but she had dealt with worse foes before. A dodge, a riposte later and she is already charging past their corpse.
“Khelyra!”
The Melusai is barely a dozen metres away! Between them is a score of warriors ready to lay down their lives for their Scáthspeaker, but Améline would fight them all if she had to.
A shout behind Améline stops her dead in her tracks. She sneaks a look over her shoulder as she defends herself from an aelf.
The Kharadron she had been fighting alongside are hard-pressed, attacked on all sides by the Cult. Even as she watches, they try to force the gap she had made by charging out. The duardin hold, exhorted to defiance by Trungim’s bellowing voice, but only just.
With a silent curse, Améline drops the aelf with a blow of the shaft of her halberd, then hacks her way back to the Skyguard’s lines. A Gunnery Sergeant shoots her a glare.
“What the krut was that?!” he shouts up at her. “Are you trying to get us killed?”
“I was trying to help a friend.” she whispers, her voice a spectre’s in the stress of battle. It makes the duardin beside her shiver, but his anger remains.
“Bozdok! Whose side are you on?”
The tide of the Cult washes back over them, preventing a response from Améline. Not that she could have given any. Anything beyond the truth would have just sounded like an excuse.
“With the army that will drag down your Skyguard, so that Maudra Rua might take flight.”
“Hrm, good. Tell her that Améline the Anvil will find her on the battlefield. But first, is Evangeline Riftborn among your numbers?”
There’s shock and recognition in Cyrus’ eye.
“Justine’s sister? We tried to give her and her friend a place with us, but she rejected our tria-”
Cyrus suddenly feels Améline’s cold gladius press up harder against his throat. But what scares him more is how quiet the Stormcast’s voice has become.
“You are very, very lucky that I’m not like you.”
Améline’s eyes light up with storms.
“Now, tell me everything you know about Evangeline.”
