Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

Zarax rears up and brings her claws down onto the first crimson-clad brute to reach us. I draw my runeblade, Evora. My heart swells at the sight of her intricate inscriptions. Like me, she is a holy weapon, forged in the heat of the stars. She sings in gratitude as I bring her round in a wide arc, slicing easily through shields, greaves and necks, toppling whole rows of Chaos warriors. Her voice is the sound of the heavens, a soaring, celestial chorus that rings out over the din of battle, elevating the bloodshed to the noble endeavour it should be. I join my voice to hers as we kill.

My Liberators hold steady under the weight of the attack, proud and determined behind their shields, an impassable wall of blue and gold. Their hammers meet with jagged, brutal axes and the air rings with the sound of breaking metal.

I see a flash of crimson. Something bolts through the crowd and slams into Zarax’s flank. She staggers to one side but I manage to stay on her back. I swing Evora down in another singing arc. She cuts through arms and faces and I follow her with Grius, swinging the warhammer with my other hand and crushing crimson helmets to a mangled pulp.

I fight with all the power and grace I learned in Sigmar’s golden halls, thrusting, lunging and pounding without ever fully losing myself to the violence. Faith is my lodestone, directing my every step. As Evora sings, I let her voice calm me. I feel like I’m taking part in a grand ceremony, rather than riding through a crush of armoured knights.

I order Liberator-Prime Castamon to advance and he leads his retinue with composed blows. The emotion I saw in him before is gone and he pounds through the blood warriors with cool, lethal efficiency. Every few paces, his shield wall drops and he strides forth, lashing out with his warhammer. A crimson-clad colossus attacks, swinging an axe at his throat. Castamon raises his golden shield, deflects the blade and drops the blood warrior with an armour-splitting blow.

Lines of blood warriors charge towards him but Castamon is already gone, swallowed by a wall of shields as his Liberators reform their phalanx. The enemy crashes uselessly against an impenetrable wall of sigmarite and the Liberators march on, implacable and unstoppable.

I ride towards Castamon, noticing something odd. However many times Castamon’s Liberators strike, the enemy aren’t falling back. My armour has turned as red as the enemy and my muscles are screaming with exhaustion, but I haven’t moved. I’m still just a few feet into the courtyard.

I take a moment to look around.

Castamon and the Liberators are still locked in their gleaming phalanxes — gilded fortresses, battered by tides of red and brass — but they haven’t gained an inch. However terrible the wounds we inflict, the enemy never falter. If I couldn’t see scarred, sunburned chins jutting out from their helmets, I would think they really were automata. They have no concept of pain and more of them are flooding into the courtyard all the time.

Zarax rears beneath me again as an enormous creature locks its jaws around her throat. She staggers under its weight and I see that it is a flesh hound of Khorne — an enormous reptilian thing, coated in red scales and armed with talons as cruel as Zarax’s own. As it attacks, it lets out a dread howl — a sound so full of animal bloodlust that it could only have come from the bloody plains of Khorne.

Sigmar’s wrath floods my limbs and I hurl the flesh hound back into the ranks of blood warriors. It crouches and roars, iron-hard spines bristling along its grotesquely muscled back, but before it can pounce, Zarax charges forwards and I slam Grius into its drooling jaws. White fire blossoms beneath its scales and it tumbles back into the enemy ranks.

As the flesh hound collapses into ash, the blood warriors crush around Zarax, grinding me to a halt with their armour-clad bulk. Grius and Evora do their work, surrounding me in a storm of sigmarite, and dozens of blood warriors fall away, but more pile in, careless of the wounds I am inflicting.

Then I see the lord with the skinless face wading through the battle towards me. He still wears that same, knowing smirk, but his arms are a frenzied blur as he hacks through his own men to reach me.

My heart quickens. This is my chance to behead this army and end the fighting so we can keep moving. Sigmar did not send me to fight for the Anvil. We should be far from here by now. As the lord approaches, I seize my chance.

‘Seriphus!’ I cry, standing in the saddle and raising my voice over the din so that the archers on the wall can hear me. ‘Now!’

A roof of white flame spreads overhead as the Judicators launch their lightning-charged bolts. The front row of blood warriors evaporates, replaced by an explosion of blood and dazzling arcs of power. Bodies are hurled into the air and a huge swathe of the army collapses.

Zarax is thrown backwards by the blast and, when she turns back to face the enemy, there’s no sign of the flesh-faced lord. The Judicators’ volley has had little effect other than that, though. Blood warriors are still pouring from the wall and the whole courtyard is now full of them.

‘Retributors!’ I cry, seeking another way to end to this deadlock. I smile as hundreds of the hammer-wielding paladins break ranks and line up before the phalanxes of Liberators. They step slowly, encumbered by armour that would crush a mortal man. Until now I’ve kept them behind the other Stormcasts. They carry no shields on account of their colossal two-handed weapons, but they still resemble a wall of metal.

The blood warriors finally pause, not afraid, but intrigued. As the paladins march to my side, the ground cracks beneath their weight and storm-charged air flickers over their amour.

While the enemy are momentarily thrown, I give a signal to the Judicators on the walls. Another storm of blazing arrows whirrs overhead and slams into the enemy. The blood warriors’ vanguard erupts in white flame and I order my paladins to attack. They pound across the courtyard — metal-clad titans with blazing hammers. Their blows land with supernatural force and another series of detonations rocks the enemy frontline. More arrows slam home. I order the phalanxes of Liberators to follow them.

The enemy are still reeling when the Liberators’ shields crash into them and finally we start to make some headway.

Zarax rears beneath me. Blood is streaming from her flank and several of her iron-hard scales have been torn away, but she roars lightning as she carries me back into the fray.

More than any of us, Tylos has been reborn. I’ve travelled so deep into the darkness that his soul is clearer to me than his flesh. Sigmar’s forges have made him anew; my brother is a celestial lord now, not the faithless sell-sword that tormented my youth. As I leave the Anvil and turn to the Field of Blades, I hear him leading the charge. I know he will fight with honour, but I wonder if he sees how close we are to disaster. His eagerness to match Vandus’ heroics could be a dangerous distraction. The Anvil stretches for miles across the steppe, and every minute Tylos spends fighting in that hell pit will see hundreds more blood warriors pouring from the battlements. This is not the battle we were sent to win — I must find a quicker way to end it.

As the clamour of battle fades behind me, I reach the solemn quiet of the Field of Blades, where skeletal hands clutch useless weapons in an eternal vigil. Tylos and the others recoiled at the sight of this place but as the cemetery chill reaches up through my boots, I feel a blessed peace. I almost relish this chance to turn away, to sink back into shadow.

I drop to one knee and take out the Thin Man. The jumble of claws and bone lies innocently in my palm. Such an ugly little thing and yet it contains incredible power — the power to bridge worlds.