The Path Of The SoulWarden
By: Solemnus
Solemnus, of the SoulWarden brotherhood, was originally born Soloman Breckhart of Reiktennan village. He was a stout and tall, albeit gentle and quiet young man, raised by keenly devout and faithful parents on a modest farm. Because of this he grew up respectful of his peers and elders and learned the value and reward of honest work. Eventhough he was an only child he did not expect special favoritism and understood that only through hard work and faith would good things come of his labors - Sigmar owed nothing to those who would not help themselves.
His childhood and adolescent years, though generally unremarkable, were highlighted by a few good deeds that gave more light to his character as a moral individual. On one occasion, when he and his friends were suddenly come upon by a pair of wolves on the edge of his family fields, he drove them away by bravely wielding a tree limb and knocking one wolf reeling and thus the other into retreat. Another time during recess at school in the winter months the children were skating and playing on the frozen pond nearby when a friend of his broke through. Without debating the issue he ran out to his friend, and using his own trousers as a rope of sorts, pulled him from the frigid waters of certain death. Soloman was known for his strong hand, but his even stronger heart.
When he came of age Soloman married, as most do, to a young woman of Norscan heritage and moved with her to help run the family pig farm. His wife's father had died from disease the season before and only she and her mother were running the farm at much loss to the farm and their own well-being. Within two seasons, the farm was prosperous again, and the family had a broad outlook to life. They were overjoyed with the summer birth of their newborn daughter and by fall were already planning to try for another.
Until the marauders surged south...
With the colder and harsher months approaching peasants and nobility alike were preparing provisions and supplies to weather the often harsh winter of Norsca. Soloman, like most farmers, was busy building and repairing fences, pens and stables for his livestock and chopping chords of wood for his fireplace and hearth. On one such "normal" day, the course of his life, and his destiny, was to be shifted drastically.
Trying to beat the dying light one afternoon, Soloman ushered the pigs into the new temporary pen he had built over the hill to the south of the house. He was tired, dirty and hungry and could not wait to get home and see the baby and his wife, whom was again beaming with the light that all women have when they are with child. He turned to head back up the hill but stopped and furrowed his brow slightly at the sight of a halo of orange light that seemed to come over the crest. The sun was setting to west with a similar light, but only his home lay to the north. With a little more endeavor than normal Soloman trotted up the hill curiously and crested it to find the source of the light. His home and much of the trees and small buildings around it were awash in flame.
Solomans face turned white despite the dirt and dust that caked it, and he broke into a staggering run towards the blaze. Halfway there he heard a scream and saw the side door to the building explode outwards and four figures emerge holding his wife and the baby in disarray, frantically squirming and kicking to escape their grasp. Time slowed to a crawl, as it might as well have been that he was standing in place rather than running as fast as his tired legs would carry him. In the next moments, Soloman witnessed the infant torn from his wife's clutches and dashed against a tree, dead in an instant. Then, two of the men flayed her with jagged-edged blades. Her screams and flailing ended instantly as her organs, and the baby she carried inside, spilled forth into a pile of gore. The other two laughed as if they had just played some simple joke on the woman and kicked her now slumped corpse.
The next moments sped up to twice the speed of normal as Soloman, still at break-neck speed, vaulted the fence to the side of the house and was at the marauders backs. Paces behind them was his wood chopping block, next to which sat his wedge and maul. Every instant and image that Soloman had just endured coalesced into the center of his being and overtook his gentle, subdued nature with pure, unfettered rage and hatred. Between strides Soloman grasped the maul with one hand and used his forward momentum to bring it up and forward. The closest laughing savage never knew what hit him.
Fragments of skull and brain matter erupted from the mans face, forced from rear to front of his head, and spattered one of the men that had just murdered his beloved. A moment too late in their frenzy they noticed the man, a whirling cyclone of crushing death, emerge amid them as if from the smoke blanketing the farmhouse. Another fell as his ribcage was caved in, puncturing lung and heart. Another crippled and brought to the ground as one knee was forced to bend the other way, before a blurring swing came overhead and forced his head and neck down through his collar bones. The last man turned to run with his few moments while his cohorts were pummeled to death. Soloman, only now realizing he was screaming at the top of his lungs, lunged in pursuit, maul poised to strike a killing blow on the man as soon as he caught him. In ten feet the man turned the corner around the shed and as Soloman rounded the structure after him his vision lit up red and with stars. He felt himself land on the ground and the wind get knocked out of him as a heavy weight came down upon his chest. Opening one eye that was not suddenly swollen shut, Soloman was now face to face with a man whose features were twisted and writhing with purple veins, his right arm mutated into a scythe of living bone.
A voice hissed in Soloman's ear above the buzzing in his head,
"I am Malfeasan, blessed of the Raven God, and I come to bring your people their inevitable end. You can choose to join us and be blessed by the touch of Chaos, or you can be crushed like the insect you are beneath my boot and become another lost, unimportant soul in the warp."
Soloman's eyes rolled back into focus and he coughed up a gob of blood before taking a stifled breath. He was obviously overpowered and was suddenly aware of his mortality and that his time in this life in service to his country and Sigmar was over. He gathered what dignity he had left and mustered his strength of conviction and spoke slowly and forcefully.
"There is only one true and all-powerful God. His name his Sigmar and I know that even you know it well and fear it. I do not fear you or your 'Raven God' and I do not fear having to face Sigmar himself upon my death at your will. You and your 'men' are cowards and have no strength of heart and faith, and I pity your existence. You will be punished in the end."
Malfeasan broke into a chortling, broken laugh, sounding as if he were partway underwater at times before stopping abruptly and brutally grasping Soloman's jaw in his wholly human hand. He brought the sharp point of his scythe-arm to rest on Soloman's forehead before speaking again, this time in anger.
"HERE IS HOW MUCH I FEAR YOUR ALL-POWERFUL 'SIGMAR'! I WILL CARVE HIS NAME INTO YOUR FOREHEAD SO WHEN I WEAR YOUR SEVERED HEAD AROUND AS A TRINKET ALL OF MY MINIONS WILL KNOW JUST HOW POWERFUL AND RIGHTEOUS HE IS! ENJOY OUR TORTURE FOOL!"
The burning was intense and Soloman felt the tip of the mutated blade cut deep enough to etch his skull as the letters "S-I-G-M-A-R" were slowly carved into his facade. He screamed as warm, blood trickled into his right eye and mouth and almost passed out from the pain as Malfeasan finished his sanguine inscription by cutting down across his left eyeball, finishing the lower leg of the "R" on Soloman's cheek.
"WHERE IS YOUR SIGMAR NOW WEAKLING?!" Malfeasan began to laugh again as he raised his scythe-arm and poised to decapitate Soloman and claim his grisly trophy.
A warm, comforting feeling entered Solomans body and his pain subsided albeit for a moment as the air seemed to become light and pleasant, as if a spring breeze had been blown only on him amidst the choking smoke and ash of the fires that raged all around him. The crushing weight lifted off of his chest and he felt almost weightless for a moment.
"This must be death," Soloman thought to himself. And he opened his blood clouded eye expecting to see maybe clouds or a brilliant white light, or possibly even the great Sigmar himself ready to judge him and his life's deeds. Instead he saw Malfeasan being thrown back by an invisible force and a cadre of men rush past him bearing the holy hammer and twin-tailed comet symbols depictant of priests of Sigmar.
Then he finally succumbed to exhaustion, shock and trauma.
(to be finished...)