A Fan Fiction Where The Main Character Doesn’t Get Laid
By: Brian Katchmar
This story was originally submitted to Mythic!
They acted like monsters, as if all forms of reasoning and sense that came with being a member of civilization were stripped of them. They were ravenous and killed brutally as if they knew the gory details of their murder would be chronicled when what was done to the victims needed to be explained. Normally a man of my position in this world may have been naïve, but still well aware of such atrocities in this world we lived in. However, this was different, more and more reports came in of this happening and it began to scare me more than ever.
The plague was spreading. It was brutally ravaging everyone and anyone that it could claim. These were dark times for the lands of the empire. I lived in a small farming village on the outskirts of the empire. It was a place no stranger to raiders of the barbarians of chaos. Even during times of peace, the young boys of the village would be trained to both farm and fight. Everyone must be ready for raids to happen as the emperor would not normally send many troops to guard such a remote region, especially when places of much more of a primary target would be a priority of protection for the empire.
As the death toll of this disease climbed, we all took caution to practice not contracting it. As someone already 17 years of age, I was already aware of how to keep myself healthy. This idea did not comfort me as much since everyone was contracting the plague. This was indeed a cruel world, but all bad things must come to pass, I knew this.
As weeks passed from the first wind of the plague, more and more people were seeing became of victims of attacks of savage monsters that looked oddly like men. Most people such as myself thought that maybe this was the coming of a new chaos horde, as the nature of these attacks made us believe that simply they were disciples of chaos. It struck us not as odd at first that this was happening nor did we dive deep in thought about it. This would change very soon.
Gradually we saw more people in our own village acting violently. These were people who we knew and believed that they knew better than to attack so viciously. The attacks from these respected citizens of our village were similar of those monsters that we encountered outside the village and in the farming fields. After a while, several of our troops began to wonder if this was the cause of the plague itself. More and more farm hands such as myself began to take the sword to strengthen our defenses. Our concern grew greatly and since we were not connected to the rest of the empire where news can come to us, we believed that this was only happening in our region. It was rumored to be that the hordes began to plan a new raid, and they were using every pathway to march onward into the empire for a new war to rise.
Panic began to spread. The increased presence of guards halted not the attacks and the death toll began to rise. Soon we started to kill anyone who we suspected of contracting the disease, even if the suspicion was a very faint one. Everyone knew that many people objected to this approach, but the only ones who openly objected to it were the people suspected of the disease. Being the person I was, I sat back and simply watched it happen.
One day I was called to execute someone who showed many signs of the plague. The man was quarantined for a while until the people of the village generally agreed like they did for anyone else to execute him. He was taken to the center of the village and I was the one to hold up the sword to drive it into the back of his neck. I saw what I thought I knew was his family watching on crying to see there loved one in such a situation. I grieved for them and prayed to Sigmar that this entire mess would soon be over. The moment grew quite; soon I could only see myself and the prisoner. Everything else faded into darkness deprived of all sound.
I stalled for a second, until I couldn’t anymore. I drove the blade into his neck, and listened to his final breath as he prayed to Sigmar for salvation. Everything else came back into the light for me to see, and my commanding officer gave me a nod of approval to know that my task was completed. The deed was done, and everyone who watched gave their final prayers and then moved back into their houses.
I wanted to feel guilty to stripping a man of his life, but I couldn’t. My continuing faith to the empire and Sigmar to make things right again blinded me of everything else. I knew that I also had the power to aid the empire during this time of increased need. Soon the village had to send a runner to the nearby town to warn the guard’s outpost of this, it became to out of our control to hold this on our own.
The runner was to take the road our farmers normally take to deliver our crops and other goods we produced to this nearby town. Taking the road was a day’s walk, and it was the way we began to profit through trade to the town. During the development of these events, many of us began to notice that the trader that we sent once a month to town never came back. It has been weeks since the development of these events and now more than ever we notice this and assumed something must of happened to the trader.
Several of the recent guardsmen who took up arms to assist in defending our village volunteered to become the runner. One of those volunteers was myself. I wanted to make someone of myself and do something that I knew would be of great impact to the well being of the village and to those who lived in it. It was decided by the men charged with running the guard and the town that I alone was to be the one to undertake this task. There were several reasons why I alone was to do this, mainly since the decreased amount of guards would worry the townsfolk due to the ever-increasing number of attacks.
I was shown the road and told to simply follow it and I would soon reach the town. I was excited to do this since I never was anywhere else besides my farm. I gave my family and friends my goodbyes and headed out since I had not a moment to lose. I was armed with a sword and shield and some basic supplies to keep me from starving, as there was a fear that the trader who never came back was attacked.
I walked without much difficulty for several hours, I was already a well-worked farm boy and was used to carrying loads all day. I followed the road hoping to find some sight of civilization as soon as I can. As I marched on, there was a sudden increase in fog surrounding me. The forest I was marching in grew thicker and more eerie. The only real sight of a human recently coming through here were the track marks that the wagons left in the mud from the traders pulling their goods into town. Those marks were a reminder that someone came through this road before, that was enough for me to keep walking. That still didn’t make me feel any more secure as the fog began to thicken.
There were some disturbing sounds that came from the forest. Many of these sounds were something new to me and I didn’t know what they were. I decided not to worry too much about them and to reach the town as quick as I could. I should of thought that this wasn’t going to be easy.
Soon a much louder sound, much louder than anything else caught my ear. I spun around to see what was happening and I saw a shadowy figure slowly walking toward me. The fog made it difficult to see who it was but soon I began to notice details. The man who was approaching me wore a helmet with horns on it, carried a great axe and had a bare chest. His beard was much longer and thicker than any man I ever saw before and his eyes were a very piercing blue. He would have been naked if he didn’t wear the cloth pants and the helmet.
I knew right away who this was, I have seen many men dressed like him in the raiding my village was subject to when I was younger, this was a barbarian of chaos. I knew better than to think that I could talk to this man.
He raised his axe and charged me. I took my sword and shield and did the same. I couldn’t explain what I was feeling at this point, but this was the most of a battle I had even been in my life. His axe and my sword struck each other, backed up a little, and he took another swing that would be brushed off against my shield. After a brief pause, the man took his axe overheard and made another swing. I raised my shield to block this blow, but the power of this axe was greater than that of my shield. I could feel my shield being crushed by the axe and knew right away the axe went into my arm.
I couldn’t think of this much; I took my sword and drove it into the man’s bare chest as much as I humanly could. This blow of mine connected, as the man gave a groan and backed up from me. He grabbed my sword’s handle that was the only thing visible and tried to pull it out, but this man was already very weak, and he spat out some blood from his mouth and then fell to the ground.
I was in a lot of pain, I struggled to get my shield and the axe off and after some time, I managed to do that. I knew very little in the ways of nursing myself from such a thing, but I took the time to try to aid the wound. There was not much I could do however, and I went to my opponent’s dead body to retrieve my sword, preparing for another potential attack.
I could not really explain this, but despite the sheer pain I felt from having an axe driven into my arm, I felt very victorious over this. The battle I just fought excited me greatly, never before had I felt so alive. I found the strength in me to walk as fast as possible to hopefully find the town and get a surgeon.
This wasn’t going to happen though. I saw flames in the distance and when I got close, I saw the most horrifying sight I could of seen in such a situation. I knew I had reached the town, but it was in flames and the pathways were filled with people who were recently slaughtered. A battle took place here, and it was the most terrifying thing I ever saw.
I fell to the ground in horror, favoring my arm more than ever. I looked to the sky and said a small prayer to Sigmar. I knew not what was going to happen next, but I knew now that the entire empire was experiencing what my village had done. I closed my eyes; the pain became too great for me then. I could not go on.
This was truly an age… an age of reckoning.
