Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

He gives a last, porcine, grunt and topples back into the throng.

I down another opponent with a backhanded blow, then step back to survey the scene. I’ve unleashed a storm. Freed from the crush, the paladins are striding through the bloodreavers like a tempest, their voices raised to Sigmar, lightning flashing across their hammers. The bloodreavers topple before the combined onslaught of Liberators and Retributors. It’s a massacre. My army flows like gold from a brazier. In minutes we have shattered their ranks, scattering heads and axes as we go. The battle is almost won.

Boreas fights beside me, smashing his way through the enemy with slow, precise determination, splitting shields and heads.

I wipe the blood from my golden mask and realise that we’re mirroring each other as we strike.

‘Victory and honour!’ I cry, and he raises his hammer in reply.

I take a fume-filled breath and look around. There’s a vast shape looming up from the smoke further down the bridge, punctuated by ominous crimson lights.

‘That’s not the Crucible of Blood,’ I call out to Boreas. ‘We must finish this quickly and find out where the storm has landed us.’

He peers at the distant tower. ‘You have eyes in the heavens, Lord-Celestant.’

I nod and look up into the darkness. ‘Drusus!’ I cry, fending off a blow and peering back down the bridge. At first there’s no reply so I battle on, scouring the heavens for my cloud-borne Prosecutors.

The moon has fallen even closer. The sight of it is dizzying, vast beyond understanding. Such a colossal, dazzling sphere has no place looming so low. As it gets closer it starts to affect the bridge. The structure sways so violently that birds are being torn free and hurled up towards the sky, and the chains reach up to the clouds, dancing like serpents.

‘Lord-Celestant!’ cries a voice.

I make out the golden form of Drusus, flying overhead.

Divine light gilds his wings as he dives through the fumes, trailing Sigmar’s heralds of death behind him. He banks and rolls, clutching twin hammers. Even the blank expression of his mask can’t hide his excitement.

‘See what this bridge has in store for us,’ I shout, levelling my hammer at the shadows up ahead.

Drusus nods but remains overhead, struggling to hold his place, buffeted by a new storm that has sprung up.

‘Lord-Celestant,’ he cries, pointing one of his hammers back to where debris is flying up from the bridge. ‘The moon is falling.’

Before I can reply, a circle of bloodreavers surrounds me, each clutching an axe as tall as I am. If they’ve noticed their losses, they don’t show it. They lope towards me like drunken brawlers.

As I ready myself, I feel a charge in the air — traces of Sigmar’s wrath circling once more, crackling in my joints, responding to my faith. I raise my warhammer to the clouds and cry an oath.

The bloodreavers charge and my armour blazes white, ignited by the remnants of Sigmar’s tempest. Grius erupts as I bring it down between my feet.

There’s a thunderclap and a ring of light slams into my attackers.

Blood flies from their mouths and they arch in pain as their backs break.

‘Make for the towers!’ I cry, vaulting their twitching corpses and hurling myself back into the throng. Whatever Drusus has seen, the battle is nearly over and we need to advance.

My leap takes me unexpectedly high and I have an odd sensation of weightlessness. It takes me several seconds to land back on the bridge. The battle rages on, but most of the bloodreavers are dead and the rest are in disarray, so I call my retinues back into formation for the final push. We will finish this with the same dignity with which we began it.

I’m still a few paces away from the phalanx when my feet lift off the ground again and my face turns to the sky.

Deranged laughter fills the air as I try unsuccessfully to grasp on to something. Dozens of birds are being torn free and hurled into the ink-dark sky. The whole bridge is bucking and heaving.

I spin in the air, thrashing my limbs. As I turn I see that some of my Liberators have been thrown to their knees while others, like me, are rising into the air.

‘Lord-Celestant!’ cries Drusus from somewhere nearby. ‘The moon is too close!’

An iron-hard hand locks around my throat and I turn to see one of the berserk warriors laughing wildly as he drifts up beside me, several feet above the bridge. His axe swings towards my face.

The sickening sensation of weightlessness slows my reactions. I bring Grius up but only quick enough to deflect his blow, and the axe slams into my gorget. The blessed sigmarite holds, but we continue to spin away from the ground.

The bloodreaver still has hold of my throat and we pirouette through whirling embers. His breath reeks of death. His scarred, leathery muscles are slick with blood and his battered helmet is daubed in tribute to the Blood God. His face is near enough for me to see cracked, corpse-dry lips and thin, blackened teeth. He’s too close for me to swing my hammer so I pound the handle into his face, breaking his nose. He just laughs harder as we float higher.

Then he twists his voice around words I can understand.

‘Fly home,’ he says, his voice an obscene gurgle. Then, with a snort of derision, he tries to shove me away, but my speed has not entirely left me; before I’m lost to the storm I manage to grab hold of his axe.

The fool is so rabid that he won’t let go of his precious weapon, so I haul myself down its length, grabbing onto his arm with one hand and swinging Grius with the other. It connects squarely with his head and I hear the crack of his breaking neck. He slumps in my grip.

I roll again, hanging onto his corpse and get a sickening bird’s-eye view of the battle below. Dozens of my Stormcasts are being lifted up from the jolting bridge. Only the paladins are too heavy to be moved. Most of the bloodreavers are dead, but the survivors howl ecstatically as the moon wrenches us from victory. Finally, I realise the significance of something that has been bothering me since I first saw it. Every one of the bloodreavers is shackled to the bridge.

‘Their chains!’ I cry, grabbing hold of the one attached to the corpse and lashing it around my leg. ‘Drusus!’ I can see him and the other winged Prosecutors still hurling hammers of lightning at the foe. ‘Their chains! Lash us to the bridge!’

He stares at me, confused, then nods and waves his retinues into action. They dive into the crowds of drifting Stormcast Eternals, grappling as many as they can back down to the bridge. Our orderly attack has become an airborne riot. As Drusus’ Prosecutors attempt to lock chains around their brothers’ legs, the remaining bloodreavers lash out with their axes, hacking them down as they struggle to secure the chains.

My head pounds as Liberators rush up through the clouds, snatched by the lunar storm and thrown to the heavens. The moon is so close the air is groaning beneath its incredible mass.

Drusus and the other winged Prosecutors lash countless dozens to the bridge, but others are disappearing from view, flashing like reclaimed comets as they rush towards the firmament. My Stormcasts rage as they are dragged from this world. Anger boils in my knotted gut as the storm spins me faster.

The grinding of the moon becomes deafening, throbbing in my still bleeding head until I think it might split.

My sorcery is almost spent; my books have been burned. What does that leave? Just a weak old woman, waiting to feel a blade at her throat. The gods played a cruel joke when they chose me as the steppe’s last chance for vengeance.