Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

I’ve toiled so long in the shadows that my memories play tricks on me, but some things remain painfully clear. I feel a rush of anger as I think of the man who gave me this gift, so many years ago. ‘One day you will wish to return,’ he had said. ‘Keep this as a parting gift.’ I had sworn I never would, but other, more powerful oaths have left their mark on me since then and I must crush my pride. Tylos is no longer my hot-headed young brother; he is my Lord-Celestant, an avatar of the God-King, and I must do whatever he needs of me — even if it means facing my oldest ghosts.

I grab one of the skeletal hands and prize the sword from its grip. The weapon crumbles at my touch and I push the Thin Man into the open hand, clenching the fingers around it in a fist. Some snap, but the relic stays in place. Then I hold my own hand a few inches from the bones and begin to pray.

The swords around me rattle as Sigmar’s tempest flickers in the dust. The sound of fighting coming from the Anvil grows fiercer, but I pray harder, summoning the God-King’s fire from the heavens. The dust becomes a whirlwind, spinning around me and cutting through the gaps in my armour. Finally, as my words become a howled song, the skeletal hand grips mine and the Thin Man turns to ash, his promise finally fulfilled.

Reality slips away.

Damp, bone-aching cold seeps through my armour as I enter the Realm of Death. Serpentine mist coils around me and I see bestial faces in the ether — spirit hosts, pawing at my armour, trying to wrap their deathless claws around my heart. An unholy chill seeps through my breastplate but such insipid souls are no threat to an emissary of the God-King. I grab one of my honour scrolls and mutter a prayer, driving them back with a powerful stream of litanies and oaths. They whir and spiral away from me, letting out thin, moaning wails as they tumble back into the shadows. As they fade from sight, I see how the heavy boot of Chaos has transformed the Tolgaddon Marshes.

Wherever I look there are cloud-scraping talons — Chaos citadels with brutal, triangular towers. They punctuate the horizon like a stone forest, spilling shards of crimson through the tumbling clouds of spirit hosts. I feel as though I am in the jaws of a beast. Hordes of bloodreavers are marching through the gloom, mustering for battle beneath crude, brazen standards bearing the sigil of the Blood God. They are accompanied by columns of smoke-belching monstrosities that could either be war machines, metal-clad beasts, or an unholy hybrid of both.

I tremble with rage as they barge past, screaming their obscene battle cries, but I have the sense to keep silent and stay in cover. The Thin Man has led me to a ditch full of brackish water, piled with mounds of armour and old clothes. It’s an undignified way to arrive but it gives me a moment to study my surroundings. I peer over the edge and see nothing familiar. The great charnel palaces that once filled the marshes have been destroyed. There are a few crumbling remnants of one of Nagash’s corpse cities, but they’re so defaced and ruined that I can’t work out where I am. It looks as though the Supreme Lord of the Undead has been usurped and driven from the marshes by a more potent power. If Nagash’s citadels have been overrun, what does that mean for the one I seek?

‘Where are you?’ I mutter, scouring the banks of wailing mist. Whatever has happened to the underworlds, my former master still lives, I’m sure of it. I can almost hear him, scratching away at his rolls of vellum — endlessly recording and reviewing, oblivious to the sound of his world falling down around his ears. I have no other option but to follow my instincts, so I wade off through the knee-deep mire in the direction that feels right.

I grimace as I barge through the floating mounds that surround me. They’re not clothes as I first thought, but corpses, bloated and deformed by the water. White, lifeless faces roll to stare at me as I shove the bodies aside, following the course of the ditch. Every few minutes I risk a glance over the top. As I near the fortress, I grow more alarmed. The Chaos bastion is built on a scale that defies nature. It’s so vast that clouds drift around its towers and the huge armies pouring through its gates resemble billows of glittering dust.

I’m starting to think I should head back to Tylos when a sound makes me pause. There’s something approaching from behind me. I can’t see through the gloom but I can hear the slurping, slapping sound of feet tramping through the mud and gore. I hurry around the next bend and freeze. Up ahead of me, there’s a figure hunched over the bodies, feasting on their ruptured flesh as if it were a glorious banquet. The creature is a stooped, grey-skinned horror, covered with open sores and threaded with writhing worms.

At the sound of my approach, the ghoul whirls around and stares at me with wild, rolling eyes. It’s carrying a half-gnawed femur, and at the sight of me it scampers through the filth, swinging the bone at my face.

My warhammer lands with such force that the ghoul’s skull collapses. It cartwheels back through the ditch, losing its makeshift weapon and collapsing into the bodies it had been feeding on. The blessed sigmarite of my weapon is engraved with holy tracts and as the monster tries to rise, its body collapses and burns under the weight of my faith, shrivelling and boiling into a pale soup that seeps away into the mud.

I’m now left in no doubt as to what is approaching from the opposite direction so I stride on through the bodies, keen to avoid making any more noise, but before I’ve taken more than a few steps, the bodies start to rise. Dozens of the corpses are revealed as wild-eyed ghouls, identical the one I just destroyed. They moan and gurgle as they lurch towards me.

My hammer flashes in the dark as I charge through them. There’s no time to stand and fight and no way to return. All I can do is race on and pray I reach my destination before I draw Khorne’s bloody gaze.

The ghouls swarm around me, rising from the mud and viscera like a pallid fungus. They’ve clearly been waiting for something to fall within their cadaverous reach, too afraid to venture out into the open.

Finally, a whole wall of grasping, broken-clawed hands slams into me, barring my way. I strike them down with furious blows but, eventually, they clamber towards me in such numbers that I’m driven up the wall of the ditch and out of cover.

The nearest of the warbands is less than a hundred yards away and, as I stumble into view, still pummelling the mob of leering ghouls, my golden armour flashes in the moonlight. I am seen.

Horns blare with renewed violence and there’s a great clattering of armour as a host of warriors turn to face me. At the head of the column there is a knight in thick, spiked armour. He bellows a command and his men break ranks, racing towards me with a deafening roar.

‘Where are you?’ I gasp, racing through the darkness. There’s nothing waiting for me but another mound of bodies. ‘You promised me a way back!’

The ghouls are butchered and trampled into the ground as the Chaos warriors bear down on me. I find myself surrounded by rows of heavily armoured killers. They slow as they approach, readying their brutal axes, intrigued by my strange armour.

I back onto a mound of bodies, my hammer raised before me, then laugh as I see what I’m standing on. Piled beneath me are the slaughtered remains of a library — charred remnants of books, trampled into the ash and mud. They are as familiar to me as the faces of my own family. I spent my youth cataloguing these ancient texts and I understand immediately what they mean. He has left me a way back — a way through the glamour that has shielded him from the Blood God. I grab a book and start to chant the old litanies, waiting for the necromancer to hear me.