Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

He snarls and jabs one of his bloody, brass-plated fingers at my forehead.

‘No games.’

‘Why would I tell you anything more?’ I ask, playing a fool; playing along with his lie.

He relaxes visibly, thinking he still has me in his power. He points his sword at a space in the floor of teeth. ‘It’s not finished. You know who’s next.’ He leans close, dripping blood onto my face. ‘I’ll make an exception and kill them slowly.’

For a moment, I allow myself to imagine that his words are true — that I have a family to save, that they’re still alive somewhere, waiting for my powers as a sorcerer to buy their freedom. I picture their trusting, beautiful faces and it almost breaks me. My eyes fill with tears and the idiot thinks it’s because I’m afraid for them. He thinks I don’t know they are long dead.

His breathing quickens as I nod.

I sneer at his butchered generals. ‘They were wasting your time. They lacked the wit to find the real threat.’ I look beyond him, out through one of the narrow windows. ‘But there is still an enemy. There is a way you could shine.’

His eyes blaze and he moves to grab me, stopping himself at the last minute as though he’s afraid of shattering a precious jewel.

‘And if I slay this enemy?’

‘If you could slay the man I’ve seen, your future will be secure.’ I glance at the sign of the Blood God, Khorne, carved into the back of his throne. ‘You will have served your god well. He’ll be in no doubt as to which of his lords should rule this land. You’ll become lord of the Kharvall Steppe.’

He growls again and I wonder if he might finally kill me. But no, he’s just overcome with excitement. He’s picturing his peers — all the other lords vying for control of the steppe — and thinking of how he will feel when they kneel before him.

‘Show me.’ He sounds awed.

I shoo him away like a dog and, incredibly, he backs away, taking his hounds with him and sitting back on his throne. I take a cloak from one of the corpses and fling it around myself with a flamboyant gesture, as though it’s a beautiful robe. My sense of the theatrical has not entirely left me. Then I walk to the centre of the chamber and climb up onto the grindstone. It’s a huge ring of pitted granite, five feet high and almost as thick. I wince as I haul myself up onto it, but the thought of what comes next gives me strength.

For one ridiculous moment I wait for the musicians to start, but then I remember that they’re all dead. I look at Hakh, unsure what to do. He’s hunched forward in his throne, holding back his hounds and staring at me with such devotion that I almost laugh.

With the hounds restrained, a ghost of my power returns. I start to hum the Song of Summoning and beg my body for forgiveness as I subject it to another ordeal. My muscles remember what I do not and, as I start to dance, I hear the dead musicians in my head, willing me to succeed.

The whole performance is quite ironic. These meat-headed morons despise magic but they can’t remove it fully from their towers any more than they can bar the passage of the air. As my stiff, bruised limbs twist themselves into the old shapes, a breeze springs up around the grindstone, snapping through my borrowed cloak and whipping up the fragments of broken wall. It’s no natural breeze and as I look over at Hakh I feel the urge to laugh. To leave such sorcery unpunished is clearly a torment for him.

It only takes a few moments for the images to appear. My mumbled verses become an impassioned hymn and the breeze turns into a whirl of places and scenes. I spin faster and Hakh rises from his throne, staring in wonder at the figure forming in the tempest — a great lord, clad from head to toe in gleaming armour. His face is hidden behind a smooth, expressionless mask and he carries a great rune-inscribed warhammer. He’s leading a vast host of golden knights into battle, some borne on wings of lightning and all of them wielding hammers that flash with the light of the storm.

I’ve known of his coming for weeks, but now I see him I’m as enraptured as Hakh. The lord’s armour sparks and flickers as he moves, charged with some kind of divine energy, but it’s his demeanour that shocks me. I’ve never seen anyone move through a battle with such solemnity. He strides calmly through the fighting, untouched by the violence and corruption that surround him. Great chunks of the ground are being torn free and hurled up towards the sky, but he maintains a cool, regal majesty. As I study him, a painful thought creeps into my mind. It’s that most treacherous of worms: hope.

‘Is this him? Is this the warlord I must face?’ Hakh staggers towards the apparition, reaching through the flashing lights. ‘Who is he?’

My plans are forgotten. I stare in wonder.

‘He is called Tylos.’

Duty keeps me sane. I will not let my brothers die.

I haul myself down the chain and step onto the bridge, ignoring the pain, the screams and the madness of the storm. I drive down my anger and level my thoughts. I study the fastening around my leg and see that the bloodreavers have designed them for a specific purpose — so that they might travel through the lunar storm. This must be something they endure regularly, and it must therefore be something that passes. I look up at the moon and see that it’s already swinging back up towards the stars. We will ride this out. We will sanctify the Crucible of Blood.

I fasten the chain tighter and stagger across the lurching bridge, barging between crowds of tumbling bodies. I grab those I can, fixing them to the structure, while crushing those in red with Grius until they are as broken as the birds. It’s hard to fight cleanly in this madness, but I refuse to slip into brutality. I’m no longer the animal Sigmar lifted from the slave pits. I’m a good man; a devout man. Every kill I make is in Sigmar’s name.

My men follow my lead and soon we’re on the attack again, bloody and shackled but twice as determined. The laughter of our foes ceases as they find themselves once more facing a wall of hammer-emblazoned shields. I doubt we look as glorious as when we arrived, but I’m sure we are more terrifying.

Drusus and his men loop through the night sky, supporting our advance, hurling Sigmar’s twin-tailed judgement.

The bloodreavers fight on. They can’t hope to win, but the pitiful few that remain throw themselves at us, fuelled by a senseless kill-fever, thrashing and hacking as we trample them.

The final push is over in minutes. The storm is definitely fading now and the bridge becomes calm. Eventually, the moon is high enough that we can smash our chains and charge, finishing the bloodreavers in a silent, efficient slaughter.

I grab the last of them by the throat and drag him to the edge of the bridge. He kicks as I hold him out into the night, studying him with silent dispassion. He stops struggling and spits on my mask, his phlegm sizzling angrily on the metal, and stares at the blood flowing from the eyehole of my mask.

‘Blood for the Blood God.’ He starts laughing.

I remain silent.

The bloodreaver’s eyes become lucid and I am pleased to see that I have confused him. He continues to laugh but it sounds forced. He strains to free himself whilst staring at my mask, trying to see what lies behind.

There was a time when I would have crushed him just see his pain, to see him beg for mercy, but I stay my hand. I am no longer that man. I brought the bloodreaver out here to denounce him, to list his crimes and vent my rage, but now I realise that would be as clumsy as revealing my face.

I drop him from the bridge.

As the bloodreaver falls from view, the insanity of this place hits me. I know the name of this kingdom — the Kharvall Steppe — but little else. I had assumed that the bridge spanned a great river, but the thundering noise I can hear is coming from something far stranger. Below us is an ocean of black fire, boiling with tormented creatures. I have no doubt that this place was once magnificent, but now it’s a monstrous sight. I look down on a frenzied tsunami of reptiles, mammals and crustaceans, bound together by flames and ash, tumbling and rolling over each other in a furious rush to escape the heat. Some of the scorched creatures resemble things I can recognise, but others have been warped into lunatic creations of horn and scale. The moon paints them red; a torrent of claws and blood.