Balthasar Gelt stood inside the hidden monastery based at the bottom of a mountain, only accessible by a portal in a Bloodthirster’s cave, and watched as his Emperor was lying on an altar table, his mind being transported across the stars in order to make contact with the God-King Sigmar who could grant Karl his legs once more and empower the armies of men to defend them from the next Greenskin Waagh!, the wicked ambitions of the undead or the growing tide of Chaos and Norsca.

Gelt watched as the unconscious emperor started writhing in pain as a single stream of blood emerged from his nose. “Should we do something?” Gelt asked only for the impatient Stossel to reply “He’s fine. Don’t interrupt my spellcast again.” Gelt stepped back to not anger the celestial wizard again. It was eerie how quite the monastery had become. When he and Karl entered this place, it was so much more lively. The wizards were friendly, there were livestock pens and there was the constant howling of an imprisoned chaos spawn. Wait,….where did the chaos spawn go? In fact, where did its cell go? Balthasar looked around his surroundings and became incredibly confused. The stone walls of the monastery were gone. The side tunnels leading to other laboratories seemed to have vanished. This was just a cave now, the only area that hadn’t changed was the altar and stone walls around it. Everything else had gone. How could he have not noticed this?

The more he thought about his false surroundings, the more he noticed something else as well. An itch. An itch on the back of his left hand which seemed to be becoming stronger whenever he questioned the situation around him. The itch seemed to fade whenever he stopped thinking about the situation and would then immediately come back when he did. Eventually, the itch became so fierce that Gelt had to remove his left glove to scratch it with his right hand. As he did this, Stossel suddenly appeared before him. “Are you alright, gold man?” “Uhmm…I think so. It’s just an itch on my hand.” “Well, it’s just a reaction to being a wizard located so close to the chaos wastes, we all adapt to it eventually. I’m sorry for snapping at you human, I only wanted to stay focussed on the ritual.” Gelt accepted the apology but privately became more alarmed as Stossel returned to the altar. Had he just called him human? As in, Stossel is not? The more Gelt throught to himself, the more troubled he became and the more aggressive the itch on his hand became in turn. He hadn’t even noticed it while he was thinking but his fingers were still scratching the itch except when he now looked at it once more, he saw something truly bizzare; red & black veins! Was he mutating?

Balthasar now suspected for the worst. This was all a veil and he was slowly being corrupted by non-human entities, probably daemons given where he was. However there was just one problem, there was no way he could lift this veil without them knowing it. There was only spell he knew that could reveal a veil of daemonic magic, The Crucible, a teleportation spell where his body would take on a golden glow that gets fiercer and fiercer until he is impossible to look upon. Under such extreme light, no illusion could possibly be maintained, allowing him to discover his foes. He just had to cancel the cast before he actually disappeared and hopefully, it wouldn’t be too taxing on his energy if he did have to fight one of these people once revealed.

Balthasar thought to himself, he was still drained from his encounter with Skarbrand. Could he dare uncover what was going on? However, it was at this moment that he heard an agonising scream which shook him from his thought processes. His emperor was in serious pain and it seemed like one of the celestial wizards were about to inject something into his neck with a crudely constructed, bronze syringe. Now was the time. Balthasar stood at the back of the room, next to the portal entrance to the cave and began the casting of the crucible spell. The staff of Volans lit up and the golden light cascaded down from it through his body. Stossel turned around as Martak continued to preside over the ritual. “What are you doing gold man?” “I’m discovering the truth!”

As Gelt’s body lit up more and more, he suddenly gained a sense of clarity. The darkness faded and the veil was lifted. Except as soon as this happened, Gelt almost immediately regretted seeing the truth. His eyes adjusted as the ceiling suddenly became 5 times higher to make up for the immense Keeper of Secrets that now stood before him. Where Stossel’s face had last been, was now merely the knee of the beast that stood before him. And behind the Keeper of Secrets he saw Karl on the altar, his body wrapped in some kind of cocoon and surrounded by 2 Sorcerers of Slaanesh and 8 Daemonettes. Over against the wall to the left, was a stable for Slaaneshi hellstrider mounts with his own winged steed bound to a wall by chains and to the right, he saw the most disgusting thing of all. The human wizards that had been casting the ritual were in fact all hanging upside down by spiked chains attached to pillars all over the room. The spikes on their chains had metal bolts stabbing through their wrists and blood was dripping from the incisions. They had masks attached to their faces from whence strange tentacles seemed to be pumping their every breath into the ritual at the centre of the room to aid the sorcerers of Slaanesh’s spell-cast. Their bodies were pale, their dimensions frail, their organs filtered into their most streamlined form, their skin pulped and sifted. Forget fear, Balthasar felt true terror as he realised the horror he had offered his liege up to.

Just as the teleportation spell was about to reach its culmination, Gelt cancelled the cast. “I see you, N’kari.” Stossel smiled and lifted the veil. “Good, I have been dying to kill you.”

Gelt took a step backward to brace himself for an attack.

“There’s no point in trying to run little man. I’m going to tear your skull off, shove that mask up your arse, tear your arms and legs from your torso, turn your body to dust, fuse that dust together into glass, pleasure myself with those shards and when I’m all done with you, I will shatter that glass and turn you to dust all over again!”

– Angry React: N’kari lifted its four blades to attack only to have Gelt respond by using a Feather of Lead spell to increase their mass tenfold. N’kari simply dropped their weapons and yelled “You think I need weapons to kill you?!!” 
Gelt ignored the Keeper of Secrets’ taunts and looked over to his mount, casting the same spell to the horse’s chains but this time making them lighter rather than heavier, such that Quicksilver could pull itself free. Quicksilver attempted to fly towards Gelt only to be caught mid-air by one of N’kari’s right arms, its nails digging in and piercing the horse’s flesh. Before Gelt could conjure a plan, N’kari reached over with its other right arm and tore Quicksilver’s head off as if it were snapping a twig. Gelt looked on shocked, and attempted to cast a wall of gold to protect himself but before the spell could fully materialise, N’kari’s two left arms reached forward and punched through the wall, lifting Gelt up off the ground and …..*ending redacted*……

– Love React: N’kari charged forward at Gelt as he fired of a whole volley of offensive spells: Searing Doom, Silver Arrows of Arkha and the Gleaming Gold Arrow all the other metal shards had merely caused dents in the daemon’s body, dents which thanks to the aiding buffs of the 2 sorcerers were not causing N’kari to bleed. Finally, Gelt decided to hold nothing back. He planted the Staff of Volans into the ground beside him and untied his cloak before casting the almighty Embodiment of Chamon spell. N’kari roared while befuddled as the wizard transmuted himself into a living gold statue, with blades for hands and metal for flesh. The immense daemon and the equally large statue engaged in melee. N’kari slashed at this statue but his swords could not pierce it, for there was nothing to pierce. It was a solid block of gold with no hollow-spacing inside. N’kari stabbed at it only to break their swords, thereby giving the Gelt statue free reign to dismember N’kari bit by bit. Finally, after Gelt beheaded N’kari, killed the daemonettes and stabbed both the sorcerers, he transformed himself back into human form to tend to the emperor. Karl Franz was still alive but was clearly in a bad shape mentally thanks to whatever was happening subconsciously and no matter what he tried, Gelt could not wake Karl up. He decided to stay by the Emperor, tend to any wounds that emerged and care for him as long as Karl was out of action.

– Sad React: N’kari charged forward at Gelt as he fired of a whole volley of offensive spells: Searing Doom, Silver Arrows of Arkha and the Gleaming Gold Arrow all the other metal shards had merely caused dents in the daemon’s body, dents which thanks to the aiding buffs of the 2 sorcerers were not causing N’kari to bleed. His spells were having less and less effect as N’Kari’s skin coarsened and adapted in real time until finally, N’Kari shrugged his attacks off and knocked him into a nearby wall. As his final move, he invoked Gehenna’s Golden Gun to forge a ballista which fired a golden harpoon into one of N’kari’s arms. As N’kari wallowed in pain, Gelt used his powers to free Quicksilver and the two fled the cave together through the portal. Gelt will have to live with the shame of abandoning his Emperor.

– Laugh React: N’kari charged forward at Gelt as he fired of a whole volley of offensive spells: Searing Doom, Silver Arrows of Arkha, Gehenna’s Golden Gun and the Gleaming Gold Arrow but all these metal shards and spells had merely created dents in the daemon’s body, dents which thanks to the aiding buffs of the 2 sorcerers were not causing N’kari to bleed. Finally, Gelt decided to hold nothing back. He planted the Staff of Volans into the ground beside him and untied his cloak before casting the almighty Embodiment of Chamon spell. However, he had underestimated the effect all this spellcasting would have on this body. After casting the crucible first, then minor spells and finally the embodiment of chamon, his body simply could not handle the strain anymore as his itchy hands worsened and worsened, sending mutations up his arms and across his body. Finally, the mutations consumed Gelt and he lost himself to chaos corruption. N’kari grinned and returned to the ritual as the newly corrupted Balthasar Gelt joined them as well. The Slaaneshi chaos corrupted Gelt lent his powers towards the fulfilment of the ritual.

Wow React: N’Kari continued to taunt the metal sorcerer as he slowly backed away towards the exit portal, only for N’Kari to taunt him over abandoning his emperor. However, rather than fighting the Keeper of Secrets, Gelt simply turned to the portal and used his powers to expand it. Sudddenly, Skarbrand the Exiled One fell through the portal and landed inside the cave. Skarbrand lifted himself up to see N’Kari and instantly enraged, throwing both his axes to one-shot the 2 Slaaneshi sorcerers as he personally confronted N’Kari in a huge wrestling match, brutally beating N’Kari as N’Kari in turn used his many arms and blades to pick at Skarbrand. As this was going on, Gelt stuck to the sides by the walls as he endeavoured to approach his cocooned emperor. He blasted the daemonettes who had posed as wizards one by one and freed Quicksilver from its bindings. He was about to carve open the cocoon when he noticed dust descending from the ceiling. This cave wasn’t designed to be a battlefield between titanic deamons and for every time hit they placed upon the other, the resulting force would weaken the ceilings integrity. Gelt decided there wasn’t enough time for this and simply lifted the cocoon onto the horse’s saddle. They attempted to fly past the daemon fight back to the portal when Skarbrand punched N’Kari so hard that the Keeper of Secrets fell on them. Fortunately, Balthasar reacted quickly by constructing a metal barrier for N’Kari to land on. N’Kari turned and saw that Gelt was attempting to escape and proceeded to lash out with its claws. However, Skabrand lifted N’Kari up, smashed it into the ceiling and proceeded to bodyslam the Daemon of Slaanesh, thereby giving Gelt and the cocooned emperor on Quicksilver just enough time to enter the portal before the entire mountain came down on them. The Bloodthirster and Keeper of Secrets were not so lucky and continued to fight until they were both crushed. One outside, Gelt opened the cocoon but found he could not wake the unconscious emperor up….

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