In the Company of the Dark Legion

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/45972214.

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Category: Gen
Fandoms: Warhammer Age of Sigmar, Warhammer Fantasy
Character: Original Characters
Additional Tags: Canon-Typical Violence, Blood and Injury, One Shot
Language: English
Stats: Published: 2023-03-24 Words: 1,744 Chapters: 1/1
 In the Company of the Dark Legion
by Blue_Scribe

Summary

What happens when Be'lakor's legion comes to town. Doom and gloom in the Mortal
Realms.

Notes

Written while listening to Cimerion - Vers la Montagne Noir. Do I always put music recs in
my fics? No, but maybe I should.
“Those of you who still live do so only at the will of my master!”

Tirienne looked up at the centaur-beast that now stood upon the ruins of the city gate, flanked
by his human lieutenants. It all seemed hardly real, now that the fighting had ceased. Just
days ago, when the knights of the city rode out to meet the enemy on the Aqshyan plains, she
had been a noble of one of the lower houses. Today, all that had been was trodden under
hobnailed boots. How many still lived? Her father? Her household? Adar? How many would
see another day? The smoke from the burning city cast a pall over the gathered crowd,
turning the daylight to an eerie amber that seemed to her to threaten to swallow the very
edges of the horizon.

“But we do not come as your enslavers! No, I am here to show you how to throw off the
shackles of weakness. Observe!”

The marshal gestured and his men at the base of the gate brought forth a handful of figures
bound in chains. Tirienne craned her neck over the crowd to get a better look at the
unfortunates. She recognized some of them—members of the gentry, stripped of their arms
and armor.

“Behold your warriors and see the reason why you are defeated! Because those you trust to
lead you are unfit even to fight the lowest of my warriors! Because they are weak, and you
are bound by their weakness!”

The centaur’s words set the crowd alight with apprehensive murmurs. Tirienne pulled her
cloak closer around her shoulders.

“Now watch!”

With a whistle, the soldiers shooed the onlookers back until there was a rough circle of open
ground. One of the invaders stepped forward, indeed clad in the brigandine armor of the
Legion’s rank-and-file. With a grunt, he gestured for a weapon—a sword—which he then
tossed on the ground in front of the captives.

Roughly, the guards unbound the first of the captive knights and shoved him forwards into
the open. Immediately, he scrabbled for the sword, snatching it off the ground before darting
back. The legionnaire made no attempt to move. If he felt any fear at all, his demeanor
betrayed none of it.

For several seconds the two simply circled each other. The knight made the first attack,
howling as he lunged with a thrusting blow at the other warrior. He didn’t get a chance to
make a second. With surprising agility, the legionnaire batted aside the sword and smashed
his fist into the knight’s face, knocking him to the ground. A number of voices started in the
crowd—cries of shock, or indignation rose above the din as the man struggled to rise, spitting
blood.

These voices were quickly silenced, however. Before the knight could rise, the other warrior
kicked him hard, whipping the man’s head to the side, before stomping a heel into his neck.
The man didn’t move again. Unfazed, the legionnaire simply motioned to the guards to
release the next captive.

This man fared little better than the previous. Neither did the one following, or the one after
that. Despite the feeling of a gnawing pit opening in her stomach, Tirienne could not avert her
eyes from the spectacle. Each blow that landed seemed to wrench her gut ever more terribly,
yet always she was reeled back in, ensnared in the stupor of violence.

She was scarcely aware when the fourth man hit the ground, his blood pouring from a throat
opened wide. Even as the body was dragged out of the way, the next man was thrust forward.
She gasped. His face was smeared in blood and soot, but it was clearly one she recognized.
Adar! He had been part of the first offensive against the invaders and she had been certain he
had perished in the battle, yet here he stood.

Only to perish in front of me, she realized. What was worse? To know her friend died
namelessly on the battlefield, or to watch it happen before her eyes, she wondered bitterly.

Still, she was already moving, pushing her way through the crowd. It would seem she had
already made her decision before she realized it. By the time she made it to the front of the
crowd, Adar had already seized the sword and was pacing around the edge of the ring,
weapon at the ready. Even despite his obvious fatigue, he moved deliberately. He always was
good with a sword, Tirienne reminisced—better than most of their peers, and better than her,
certainly.

He feinted once, twice, attempting to force his opponent into making a false move. But the
warrior remained unflappable. He started forwards, raising his sword for a blow—then
stopped mid-step, reversing his swing to catch the legionnaire on the back. The move was
slight, but for the first time, the warrior recoiled, and it was his blood that tipped the blade.

In the crowd, hushed voices spread—a glimmer of hope? On the ramparts, the centaur
crossed his arms over his chest, his mask of a helmet betraying nothing as he watched the
duel below.

Emboldened, Adar advanced on his opponent, always remaining just out of the unarmed
man’s reach. He struck another blow, and then another one. One by one, a chant began to
emerge among the crowd. Some of the soldiers shifted uneasily. Finally, the legionnaire,
bleeding from a half-dozen cuts, took the initiative. Adar sidestepped and thrust his sword
deep into the man’s thigh. For the first time, she heard him scream—a sound so filled with
hate she shrank at the very sound.

Still, the centaur on the gateway did nothing. Obscured by the smoke, he looked more like a
grotesque statue than any living being. On the ground, Adar had driven the legionnaire to his
knees.

As he turned to face the onlookers, both in the crowd and in the ranks of the legion—as he
would having defeated his opponent in a traditional duel, she realized—the legionnaire
howled and twisted himself, even as the sword remained embedded in his flesh. Adar cried
out in shock as the man and swept his remaining leg under his.
The warrior seized the hilt of the sword, blood pouring from the wound as he tossed it aside
before pouncing on fallen Adar. The two grappled on the ground, exchanging blows—the
legionnaire clawed at Adar’s face while a blow from the knight knocked the warrior’s helmet
off. Adar took advantage of his opponent’s wound, allowing him to roll atop him, wrapping
hands worn raw around the man’s neck.

Tirienne saw it coming before Adar did. In their struggling, the two had rolled close to where
the discarded sword lay in the dust. As the legionnaire’s gasps became ever more rasping, she
watched as his outstretched fingers, before flailing at the dust, wrapped themselves around
sword’s hilt. Before she could choke out a warning cry, the warrior slammed the pommel into
Adar’s temple with speed and precision that should have beyond a dying man.

He hit him again, and again, and again. Tirienne could only watch with horror at the savage
fury with which he battered Adar, first with the sword, then with his bare fists as the
implement became too crude a tool to conduct his hate onto his opponent’s body. Adar
stopped fighting back long before the man stopped.

When the man stood—haltingly, still bleeding from his wounds—the crowd fell absolutely
silent. For the first time, Tirienne saw his face clearly—even blackened and bruised by
blows, she saw him. Dark, curly hair fell over his brow, matted with blood and sweat. He was
clearly young, though war had aged him, and he wore a veteran's scars. Most striking were
his eyes. Where she expected to see hatred, some animal ferocity, there was simply nothing
there—no shine of life, no recognition of his actions, or the man at his feet. He turned back to
the ring, though for a moment she thought her eyes met his.

The breath drained from Tirienne’s lungs in a soundless scream.

Damn him. Damn them. If Sigmar won’t strike you down, I will!

Before her feet had even started moving, it seemed to her that her hands were already around
his neck, in his face, biting into his flesh like writhing devils. She pushed past the townsfolk
ahead of her, past the guards. Their fingers slipped from her cloak like grasping smoke.

By the time man could turn, Tirienne was already upon him. Although he was stronger, he
was tired, and she was beyond sensation as her hands tore at his face. He thrust a hand into
her face, trying to force her off of him. Though her hair fell into her face, she watched his
eyes widen, then roll back. Blood welled up beneath her fingernails as she pressed, and—

The world turned upside down as an iron-shod boot connected with her ribs, knocking the
wind out of her and tossing her crumpled into the dust. A figure clad in black plate stood over
them—one of the centaur’s captains. He pulled the fallen legionnaire to his feet. Rough hands
grabbed her by the arms, hoisting her off the ground, dragging her to the edge of the ring.
Tirienne saw a woman standing behind the marshal whisper something, then bark an order at
the soldiers on the ground as they dragged Adar’s body away. Tears blotted out the world as
she watched Adar’s body disappear, his mauled face a slick scarlet blossom in the dirt, staring
unseeing at the abyssal sky.

All the while the centaur marshal simply laughed a deep, resounding laugh devoid of mirth.
Bound and beaten, the next few hours blurred together for Tirienne into a mire of violence—
the captain took the place of the legionnaire, and the fights became less duels and more
executions.

As if they had been anything else to begin with.

The longer the fighting went, the more Tirienne realized that the people were no longer
chanting for the warriors of their city, but for the enemy champion—stoic, black-clad, and
triumphant.

How had this happened? Had these people not paid homage to Sigmar in the past, taken
sanctuary in his very temple? But all of that was ash and rubble now. No, she realized, the
city had fallen long before the Dark Master’s legions came.
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