Battle raged around him.  (Knights of Altair flee the Barad Mines.)  With a hearty laugh, Rumlar burst from his battlewagon, leading his boyz through the ruins to strike at the Knights.  As he leaped over the wall to the floor of the ancient hall, Rumlar roared, urging his boyz forward.  He felt a warm breeze pass across the side of his face thinking another space marine rhino had burst into flames.  Rumlar turned and looked into the whirling vortex at the center of the ruin, the mob running past.  He looked into the light and heard the call.

The eye stirred. Like a spider, whose web thrums with the flapping of a caught fly’s wings, ‘The Master of Fortune’ followed the vibrations of fate to the blue fire outlining a crack from the Aether into the Materium.  There, The Master gazed through the crack and much to his surprise and delight a pair of eyes peered back.

The eyes met; time stopped.  Time flows differently in the Immaterium. It may have stopped for only a moment or an aeon, but in that span, The Master wove another thread in the vast web of conspiracies stretching across time and space.

The ork were not often open to The Master’s influence.  This “Kaptin,” however, already had the spark in his eyes.  Only a little tinder would light the fire that will set worlds aflame. “Will it accept his counsel?” he pondered. The Master conjured an image more amenable to the greenskin’s sensibilities. His promises of fortune and glory fell on receptive ears.

Was it only a moment or had hours passed?  A powerful, gravelly voice laid out Rumlar’s fate and fortune before him.  Rumlar squinted his eyes, searching for the speaker.  In his mind’s eye he looked up at the Great Ork.  The Great Ork looked down and whispered to him a cunning (but brutal) plan.

Rumlar watched the puny humies run away, his boyz in hot pursuit. He turned, called for his wagon and climbed in.

Slap Dash, his trusted grot orderly, hopped down from one of the small turrets onto the deck of the wagon. “Hey boss! That was . . . some . . . bat . . .”  ‘Dash had an uneasy feeling. The boss was standing quietly, looking out the hatch, as the wagon rolled back to the shuttle that will take them back to their new kroozer.

The Kaptin usually called for a fresh bottle of fungus rum after a fight.  ‘Dash slipped up next to Rumlar and lifted the bottle to his Kaptin.  Rumlar turned and looked down at his orderly and . . . smiled.  A serene look on his face and a pale blue light shining in his eyes, Rumlar reached for the bottle and said to ‘Dash, “We’ze got a mishun, ‘Dash.  I got the word strait frum the topfs.”

‘Dash looked into the eyes staring down at him and saw the light.  “We’z goin’ places, ain’t we boss?”

“Yep.  We’z goin’ places,” Rumlar answered.  “We’z shurley goin’ sumfplace . . . soon.”

Beyond time, beyond space and reality, Tzeentch chuckled.  “We shall see Kaptin. We shall see.”

The Corvus Cluster is a Warhammer 40K blog documenting our wargaming adventures in the fantastical sci-fi universe of Games Workshop.