Slowly, and silently, the Tzaangors crept through the jungle. They had spent enough time in the Dell to become acquainted, almost familiar with their surroundings, the nature of the jungle. Specifically, they had learned much in their skirmishes against the Seraphon. Sepideh, the former first mate of the”Pyresoul”, was at their head, both figuratively and now literally.
After hiring mercenaries for the Battle of Old Brass at the coast, Sepideh and her crew had been ordered to join the main force of the Templars in the Furyoth Dell. What the Archprophetess planned necessitated all available forces to join her directly.
There had been no word from Templar Captain Areshtur, and the fact worried her.
Their duty as scouts for the Holy Procession of Blood led them to encounter many warbands following the dark gods out in the wild; most of them were arriving to join the Procession in its Crusade. Others had far different plans – if misguided by the Fae or simply misguided was hard to tell.
It was not easy to differentiate those that chose to join or those that chose to oppose; having an Ancient Artifact of Chaos Undivided at the head of the Procession naturally brought a fair amount of diversity amongst its followers.
They had been following this particular unknown chaos warband for quite some time now.
The stalking came and felt natural. She felt alive, leaping from branch to branch, keeping to the shadows. It took her back to a different life long, long ago – back when her beak had not been real but a haphazard imitation, the skull of a large bird of prey bound over her head. Back when, in her primitive mind, she worshiped Our Burning Saviour as the great gatherer. Before she was… uplifted.
It was welcome, for she missed the feeling, and ship’s decks and masts were but an unsatisfying surrogate.
Her attention back at the unknown warband, Sepideh recognized markings of Nurgle and Khorne on their armours. Warriors tainted by Nurgle were represented the least amongst the Procession’s forces – unsurprisingly, considering the Templars of Our Burning Saviour’s reputation – but that alone was not enough to decide their fate, not in the Procession.
…
Sepideh had to get used to that, too. Everything about those warriors dedicated to Nurgle was revolting. They were not maggotkin, not yet. Still, the rusty armour and the gluey, rotten liquid dripping out from the gaps made it obvious they were close.
As they marched, Sepideh’s scouts watched, and listened.
For the most part, the unknown warriors had marched in silence, with only short and low conversations, some rare Khornate swearing and boasting notwithstanding.
The multitude of charms and trinkets they were wearing were supposed to disrupt some spell they deemed the Demons to be under, she gathered. She had seen charms like this before, on the bodies of those they had to kill. It was probably some rumor the Fae were spreading.
…
“Halt! In the Name of the Procession!” The boastful command ripped Sepideh’s attention away from their prey, towards the small group of people that had come out from the treeline.
Brownrobes. Sepideh cursed under her breath. They shouldn’t be this far south… but like with many Khornate warbands, their special interpretation of discipline made working with them difficult.
Officially, they were the red-robed Reapers, but nobody called them that, except to their faces. A Khornate warband whose initiates received a white robe they didn’t ever wash, so that it would bear witness to all the blood they spilled. The result was robes in multiple shades of brown. The reapers didn’t seem to mind, but it also spawned the rather derisive name they were known by outsiders – brownrobes.
They weren’t bad warriors – they just lacked any sense of subtlety.
Sepideh crept closer, and subtly signed her troops to do the same.
“We spit on your Procession, Tzeentchian scum! Khorne will feast on your Blood!” the warband’s leader replied, spitting the words out as if they were curses.
“Khorne is with us, his Demons lead the charge! Your Skulls will soon adorn his throne, heretic!” The brownrobes’ leader brandished his two-bladed axe, and any semblance of a conversation between the two warbands soon dissolved into a flurry of insults and curses, with the Nurgle-markes scum joyfully bubbling under their helmets.
Very well then. So much about their nighttime ambush.
Upon Sepideh’s signal, as one, the Tzaangor warriors broke their cover and came out from the trees, charging the unsuspecting Khornate-Nurglite alliance from behind.
As they were bound in bloody close combat with the brownrobes in the front, the elegant, curved weapons of the Tzaangors cut deep into their vulnerable backs.
Sepideh herself jumped down onto one of the Khornates, the claws of her feet burying deep into his unprotected back, before, with practiced precision, she slid her blade behind his collarbone, thrusting it deep into his body. The man went limp and sank to the floor, where she barely ducked out of the way of a brownrobe’s axe before an accident could happen.
Only now, with the enemy engaged and the element of surprise spent, the cries of “Khorneeeee!” and “Blood for the Blood God!” confusingly coming from both sides were finally joined by the Tzaangors’ “Glory to the Flame!”
The lumbering Chaos warriors of Nurgle were slow to react to this new threat, and Sepideh’s nimble scouts cut a gory swathe through them, hacking at the exposed diseased flesh, dodging any countering strikes. As usual, Nurglites were hard to bring down, so Sepideh and her warriors focused on disabling their limbs, before they went in for the kill.
The fighting quickly devolved into furious carnage.
Barely evading a powerful strike from a disease-ridden, jagged sword, Sepideh sliced open the exposed stomach of the Nurglite with an elegant, effortless movement of her scimitar, and let his insides spill out. The stench was overpowering, and as usual, the usually deadly cut did little to stop him.
The Tzaangor backed away, eyeing her opponent in a defensive stance.
He was further gone than the other Nurglites.
From out the four small holes in his helm little purple tongues wriggled, and his sword was held in place just as much by tentacles than by his tumor-ridden hand. The sores all over his body wept a foul black liquid, and from an invisible mouth, the creature giggled with insane glee.
With powerful, sweeping strikes the Nurglite Champion came at Sepideh, forcing her back and cleaving the leg of one of her compatriots clean off in the process.
She drew the Champion away from the bulk of the fighting, to gain more ground to maneuver. With quick, determined steps, she rounded him and sliced at the weak points of his left leg, with sickening ichory blood flowing freely and spraying the jungle floor.
Reflexively, she parried a heavy strike with her shield and redirected it into the ground – with surprising speed, the Champion’s blood-red worm-like tentacles let go of the rusty, jagged sword and lunged at her shield and arm, grasping and ensnaring her in a deathly grip, like rapidly moving constrictor snakes. Hacking at the tentacles proved fruitless; the wriggling mass seemed unending, ensnaring her sword arm with just as much force, and Sepideh came face to face with the unnervingly giggling Champion, who raised his sword for the death blow. In horror, the Tzaangor leaned her long neck back as far as possible –
She hacked her hooked beak into his exposed throat, with all the force she could muster, driving it deep inside, as deep as possible, ignoring the stench, any sense of revulsion, and tore out a big chunk of diseased flesh.
She could feel him faltering, the grip loosening, and she tore in a second time, while the Champion slowly collapsed beneath her.
With the tentacles loose, she quickly stepped away. Breathing heavily, she spit on the ground in disgust. She would never get that taste out of her beak. Quickly, she scanned the rest of the battlefield.
And just like that, it was over. It had been a different fight from what she had intended… but at least the brownrobes had pulled their weight.
She silently waited for the primal screams of victory to cease.
“Burn them.”, she ordered, solemnly, her eyes wandering over the corpses of the fallen, towards her Tzaangor warrior missing a leg.
