Free 01 - Empire in Chaos by Anthony Reynolds - (ebook by Undead)

invisible
hands, exposing the pulsing organs within. His heart exploded messily, and the
dead witch hunter was hurled across the room away from the daemonically
possessed zealot, landing in a wet, bloody heap at Grunwald’s feat.
    The daemon’s eyes blazed with fire, and it opened its mouth wide, lips
pulling back to expose a double set of sharpened teeth. It lifted one pale
taloned hand before it and it began to glow with burning light, as if the fires
of the sun were building within its flesh.
    Grunwald reached down and grabbed the icon of Sigmar wrapped around the dead
witch hunter’s hand—a bronze symbol depicting Sigmar’s holy hammer, Ghal
Maraz. It was burning hot to the touch. He held it aloft by its chain, and he
felt the heat radiated by the holy symbol increase tenfold. Blinding light
spilled from the hammer icon as Grunwald cried out to the warrior god for aid.
    But this is where his dream took a path divergent to what had occurred that
night. Five years earlier, the creature had been driven back by the symbol,
buying time for the soldiers to surge forwards and kill the daemon’s earthly
body, sending it screaming back to its own plane of existence.
    But not tonight.
    No, in Grunwald’s dream the daemon merely laughed at him, mocking his
pitiful, weak faith. It killed until Grunwald alone was left alive and frozen in
place. And then the daemon began to tear at his skin with invisible claws. He
felt his ribcage being pulled open, and heard the first cracks as the bones
snapped…
    He awoke, gasping, sitting upright in his sweat-soaked bed. The pain in his
chest lingered for a foment.
    That was when he noticed the smoke. Swearing, he leapt up, throwing off the
sheets, crossed to his door quickly, unbolting it and throw it wide. He stepped
out onto the internal balcony above the bar. Smoke was thick, and he could see t
glow of flames.
    “Fire!” he roared. In his past life, before he became witch hunter, he had
been a sergeant in the state army of Nuln, and he was well used to shouting loud
enough and with enough authority for his orders to be heard and obeyed
over the din of battle. “Fire!” he roared again, and people began to stumble
from their bedrooms.
    He saw Thorrik kick his door open violently. The dwarf was wearing his armour
and brandished his axe in one hand, while his shield was on his other arm.
Grunwald ran back into his room, and hastily pull on his boots and hitched his
belt around his waist, feeling instantly more in control with his weapons at his
side. He scooped up his belongings in his arms and quickly left the room. All
the rooms were being vacated now, and there were screams and wails from the
people trying to flee the rising inferno. The heat and smoke made him light
headed. He saw the terrified, pale face of Fiedler as the plump man ran past
him, dressed in his nightclothes. Stumbling out of the front door, the occupants
spilled out into the cold, Grunwald and Thorrik amongst them. The Hanging Donkey
was ablaze, flame leaping high up the old, leaning structure. Several people
were making ineffective attempts to stem the blaze-throwing pails of water
against the wood, and beating the flames with blankets.
    There was a group of men standing in the main street out front, flaming
brands held in their hands. The drunkard who Grunwald had stopped from killing
the innocent man earlier that night stood in the middle of the group, knife in
one hand and a burning torch in the other. It was clear that the men had
continued drinking and now they had drunk themselves enough courage to return
and finish what they had started, Grunwald surmised.
    “What have you done?” wailed Fiedler.
    “Shut up, worm,” shouted one of the men. “It’s your damned inn that is
bringing people here!”
    “Bring him to me!” shouted the instigator of this violence. “I’ve come to
finish what I started!”
    Grunwald, the braces of his trousers hanging by his sides and