Neon-green skies sparkled over the burning city. The air was thick with smoke and ash, a poisonous rain that choked and coated the lungs in its dryness, leaving them raw and red. It clung to the skin like a hot patina.
Tzeentchian horrors writhed and twisted through the wreckage of shattered buildings, their limbs a kaleidoscope of purples and pinks tearing at the living and the dead alike, cackling all the while. Most fortunate of the fallen were those initially massacred by the ceramite-shelled Rubricae, for they had died quickly enough before being dragged into the maw of these unholy things.
Crimson mana bled from the ruined buildings, splashing against the surrounding streets as if it were blood. A foul stench hung in the air, rising from a haze of burning debris.
The only sound in this hellscape came from the screaming. Thousands of voices clamoured together in a mass cacophony of pain and terror that reverberated between the walls of the burning buildings. Some of the screams seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, but most of them sounded human.
It was all so macabre and uninspired. I could not abide this display of horror, at least in its current form. I was an artist, after all; my sorcery flowed from artifice and creativity, yet my works always turned out the same. This was just another one of the Tzeentch's tricks, and I knew it. The God of Change's patronage was fickle and mocking, to be so blunt. Every time I thought I might be able to use the power bestowed by the Warp to create something beautiful and new, I found myself faced with yet more shoddy workmanship and banality. My minions—the gibbering screamers and silent Rubricae—were crude instruments. Was there no end to the Tzeentch's petty and spiteful games? Where was the grandeur, the majesty, the panoply of the chaos gods themselves? What kind of master would play such cruel games with his servants?
Even more frustrating, what kind of servant would allow himself to become so accustomed to the whims of his master that he was willing to let him do anything to him, even this? I raged inside as the world went mad around me. How did I get here? How did I find myself reduced to this?
"Exalted One, victory is upon us." Ixos, a lesser sorcerer of my warband, rasped through the thick, warp-touched plating of his war mask. While the disparity in age, experience and acumen was often marked, at least in some matters, between the scions of the Tzeentch and their servitors, when it came to battle it mattered little who led whom. We were all tools in the hands of the same god. "It is done," he said.