Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

Then, over to his right, the first of the Retributors was brought down. The warrior had already accounted for a dozen of the horde and his hammer was heavy with a black slick of blood, but the press was remorseless. Ionus hastened to his aid, just too late — a long spear-shaft jabbed out, shoved forward by many sets of hands, and the tip punched through the Retributor’s throat, wrenching the helm up and forcing the warrior’s head back.

A huge roar rang out from the horde, and the ferocity of the attack picked up. The two Retributors on either side of their fallen brother closed off the gap, fighting hard to prevent the breach in the line becoming a flood through which the enemy could pour.

By then Ionus had reached the stricken warrior’s side, and he crouched down low beside him. The Retributor was dead, and shards of the spear’s shaft still protruded from the gaping hole in his throat. Ionus pulled the splinters clear and cauterised the wound with a wave of his clawed hand. Even as the blood warriors hammered at the defences, he worked calmly and quickly, bringing his staff to bear. Ghoulish energies pooled and flowed from the bone reliquary, reaching out to latch on to the Retributor’s motionless corpse. There was a sigh like the cold wind across reeds, and the fallen warrior’s body jerked. Spectral lightning leapt from the tip of the reliquary, clamping on to the Retributor’s helm. The warrior burst back into movement with ghostly strands of luminescence writhing across his bloodied armour.

Ionus withdrew as the Retributor clambered back to his feet. The warrior pushed his way back to his place in the line and started to fight just as before. Unperturbed, his comrades moved aside to give him room, and the cordon was restored. Ionus backed away, scrutinising the remaining defenders and watching for any more breaks in the line.

The resurrection briefly cowed the horde beyond, as the work of their blades was undone. The fallen Retributor fought just as hard and just as well as those about him, with the only sign of his demise being the blood across his battered gorget.

Once the shock had faded, though, the blood warriors became even more deranged, as if affronted by the use of magical powers by one other than their own dark lords. They charged back at the Retributors, slamming spike-bossed shields into them, flinging axes with abandon, spitting curses even as the warhammers continued to reap a bloody toll. The Retributors were forced back a step further, managing the retreat expertly but still forced to close the gap between them and the stairs leading up to the Gate.

Ionus remained impassive, trying to pick out the leaders among the horde. His eyes finally rested on a true beast of a man, wading through the ranks of his own, fighting against them just to get closer to the front. He was arrayed in heavy armour of iron and bronze, and alongside a long-handled axe he carried a standard to match the Cryptborn’s own. It was he who roused the lesser fighters to such heights of frenzy, and he who held the enemy’s battle-lines together.

Ionus narrowed his eyes, studying the brass icon he bore aloft. It had an unnatural aspect to it, as if it had been forged in another world and did not belong on the mortal plane at all. Already flickers of red flame were dancing around its head, the harbingers of a greater release to come.

Ionus would have liked nothing better than to push out into the throng then, kicking aside the blood warriors to get at the real danger. When that icon disgorged its foul malediction, there was no telling what horror would be unleashed.

But his place was with the Retributors, holding the perimeter around the Gate lest the enemy guess its purpose and destroy it from its foundations. If he left the line now, the next warrior to fall would not get up and the fragile shield would surely break.

So he held his position, knowing that it was only a matter of time before their tenuous line would be overwhelmed. He risked one more look up to where the skies still boiled with the elemental tempest. The Prosecutors had begun their work, but they had much yet to do. Time was against them all, and with every moment more blood warriors piled into the furious melee under the shadows of the ruins. If the portal were not breached soon…

‘Remain steadfast,’ he whispered, to himself as much as those around him. ‘He will preserve. He will protect.’

Anactos rose up on the swirling hurricane, his wings fighting against the storm-surge. His brothers had been scattered and were working hard to stay close to Gate’s edge. The hordes seething on the earth beneath had tried to attack them again, hurling spears from the fire-lit dark, but Vandus’s charge into the main body of the oncoming ranks had blunted those attacks for the moment.

The Prosecutors had been delayed by the attack of the bloodreavers and now needed to work fast. Anactos’s joy in the flight had long gone, overtaken by the knowledge of just how little time they had. He could see the Lord-Celestant engaged in combat with a massive beast of Chaos, and the Liberator vanguard was already close pressed by a far greater mass of axe-wielding warriors. Ionus and his Retributors were almost completely hidden from view by the blood warriors they fought against, and if either flank of the Eternals’ cordon should fail then all would quickly collapse into confusion.

Anactos kindled fresh comet-fire in his hands, watching as his warhammer transmuted into a spitting ball of blue-edged brilliance that span against his rain-slick gauntlets.

‘Azyr!’ he roared, sending the bolt blazing towards the Gate. It impacted not on the stone, but in the empty void under the great archway. As it struck the point directly below the keystone, it exploded, sending shattering lines of force cobwebbing across the gap.

The whole structure shook and the fires on the Gate’s crown shuddered. From the other side of the gate, the Prosecutor Kallas launched a similar bolt, which struck the same target with the same effect. Pelias sent a shaft of comet-light spinning into contact, and then it was the turn of Valian, the one who had been dragged to earth by the bloodreavers. His comet-fire was weaker, affected by the wounds he had taken, but it struck the Gate’s heart nonetheless, adding to the steady rain of impacts.

As the volleys of raw magic rocked the portal, the runes engraved on its soaring pillars stirred into a dull red glow. More flames spontaneously ignited along its twisting intricacies, surging up old stairwells and bursting through the conical roofs of its watchtowers.

The Gate’s seals were strong, laid down during the last days of the Lost War. Sigmar had made the rune-signs himself, it was said, and his might and subtlety had held the portal fast for the long ages, resisting every attempt made by the Fallen Gods to force the passage to the Celestial Realm. Only the weapons of Azyr itself had the power to unlock those seals, and only then when used with great force. Sending Eternals into battle without using the portal was astonishingly difficult, even when the entire wizard-choirs of Sigmaron were pressed into service to accomplish it. Only if the Gate were released from both sides at once would the road be fully opened, after which the greater force of the Stormhost could pass across the bridge between the Realms unhindered.

Anactos swept upwards again, catching a fire-flecked thermal current and using it to drive himself over the summit of the portal. He summoned up a new spectral warhammer, which shimmered in his grasp before solidifying into sigmarite. Then he hurled it back towards the portal’s rim, and as it flew it transmuted back into celestial energy, streaking like the comet from which it had been born.

The explosion was greater this time — a riot of multi-hued light blasting from the Gate’s empty heart. The storm-whipped void flexed like fabric, distorting the view through the aperture. A great crack appeared through which a faint glister of gold could be perceived, and the runes on the Gate flared, turning to the red of flame.