DWARFS OF CHAOS WARHAMMER

The room slowly filled with the aroma of stew as he stared at his father’s broad back from his seat at the table.
The table was longer than they needed now, his mother and brother both years gone. He sat at the head, opposite
his father’s place. Ben’s mouth watered, his stomach growling for the cauldron of leaks, rabbit, sweet tater and onion,
famished as he was after his day’s toils on their Averland farm. Wilhelm’s was a modest plot, but by the grace of Taal
and Rhya, he and his sons brought up a profitable yield every year since he bought the land with every last copper he
and his wife had managed to scrape together. Sons. Wilhelm had one son now.
Up since dawn, young Ben stretched wearily, and the sun sympathized, lazily leaking its last rays through their wavy
old windows, spears of orange and deep red splaying along the edge of the room’s furniture to one side. He pushed
his chair back and walked to the fire. His father was stirring the stew methodically, round and round and up, taking
a pinch of salt and pepper at intervals and giving the broth a taste from a large wooden ladle. Leaning past his father,
he took a tinder from the firepit and carried it to the two candles on opposite sides of the house, then to the solitary
one on the table, lighting all. The pale, wavering yellow soon mingled and danced at the edges of the orange and red.
He then sat and waited, chin cupped in his work-weary hands.
With a haroomph his father lifted the cauldron from the fire and carried it to the table, placing it between the two
bowls. Steam curled over its edge as the stew rocked tidally, then settled. The ladle dipped down, held for a moment,
then rose in a plume of steaming stew, his father depositing the contents in one bowl, then the next. Ben inhaled
deeply through his nose and smiled at his father, who replied with a wink and took a seat in his thick, oaken chair.
‘Boy, you asked me something yesterday.’ The humor from his father’s face drained suddenly.
‘Yes,’ Ben frowned, ‘I’m sorry again, father..’
‘I’ve had a chance to think, boy. I’m not angry. I shouldn’t have gotten angry.’ Wilhelm leaned over the table, head
down, staring at nothing.
‘Yes, father?’
‘Boy... Ben. I’m going to answer your question now.’ He looked up at his son.
Ben met his father’s eyes, one bright blue, like his own, the other milky white, resting like a pearl amidst oyster flesh,
scar tissue mottling, aged, once-handsome features. His father’s stare seemed to bore through him, to look beyond at
something so far, and he wilted turning instead to the mantle above the fire. The tarnished axe looked so faded and
dust-covered it blended with the wall. They never cleaned it. Never touched it, the stupid thing. Why did he even
ask? He should have let it fade entirely, buried in dust and his father’s past.
‘It began twenty years ago. I was a wagonmaster under the Burgomaster of Nuln itself, and was to accompany a great
trade caravan to far Cathay.’ Ben’s eyes widened, and thoughts of food vanished. His father was a farmer. Had always
been a farmer. He was the son of a farmer.
‘This was before I met your mother, of course. You see, rumors had it that the Cathayan alchemists had concocted
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