‘Don’t you dare!’ bellowed Hendrick as the crowd surged and he saw a mass of terrified-looking villagers forcing his mutant brother towards the flames. The sight of Varlen knocked the breath from Hendrick’s lungs. His brother’s fine clothes had been torn to shreds by the masses of chitin and writhing muscle and quivering fat that had sprouted from the warped trunk of his body. He staggered on an uneven thicket of foul limbs that seemed ripped from a dozen species Hendrick couldn’t even have named. Yet it was Varlen’s face that filled his mind with horror, that stole his wits and made him howl with anguish. It was monstrous, deformed, the dark metal of the crown seared irreparably into the molten flesh of its forehead. Yet they were still Varlen’s eyes that stared back at Hendrick. He saw fear and frustration in his brother’s gaze, his true self thrashing frantically to stay afloat amidst the tide of revolting madness in which he was drowning.

Varlen.

They were going to burn Varlen.

‘No, no,’ shouted Hendrick, and now he did heft Reckoner. He would pulverise these superstitious fools. He would batter a bloody path through them to reach his brother and somehow, somehow, he would tear that damned crown from his head and –

Then Romilla was next to him, appearing from amidst the crowd to place a hand upon his arm. She stared at him with furious intensity, her eyes boring into his.

‘Hendrick, you cannot. These are Sigmar’s people. They are terrified, and Varlen has… Varlen has killed so many of them. Look at him, Hendrick. Look at him and see that is no longer your brother.’

‘It’s Varlen, Romilla,’ snarled Hendrick, throwing her hand off. He dwarfed the priest but still she stood in his path and placed her hand on his arm again.

‘It is not. Varlen is gone, lost to damnation, and these people are burning that which destroyed him. I am sorry, Hendrick, but they do Sigmar’s work, just as we do.’

He stared down at her, the blood hammering in his temples, the screams of the crowd beating against him like storm waves. He saw, at last, the anguish in Romilla’s face, the tears threatening to well in the corners of her eyes, and the strength went out of him.

Hendrick fell to his knees amidst the surging crowd. Reckoner slipped from his hands and hit the blood-wet grass with a thump. Romilla stepped close and placed a hand on his shoulder.

‘I am so sorry, Hendrick,’ she said.

Other sounds came after: sounds of a crowd baying and a monster burning; the inhuman howls of something that had once been human as it ranted and raved of a moon, and of danger, and of death.