Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

Mopus shows no anger as I reach his side, only pride that I could not stay away. Whatever passed between us, I sense I am forgiven. He waves me to a chair and grasps my hand as I sit. His long, filthy digits lock around my gauntlet and he gives me a smile of genuine friendship.

‘The Crucible of Blood,’ he says finally. His age-ravaged voice is hard to understand. ‘You kept me waiting for all these years, Boreas. You left me here alone, with no word of your whereabouts, take up a new religion, and then you embark on adventures without ever asking me for help. Why didn’t you come to me, Boreas? Can it really be that you no longer value my advice?’

I have few cards to play. The old scholar clearly knows why I’m here, and my new name. He probably knew my purpose before I did. I nod and then glance again at his spectral attendants. His tone is pleasant enough, but I’m in no doubt as to how much danger I’m in. His guards carry weapons of some kind, knives perhaps, but they’re too hidden in mist for me to make them out.

‘Look,’ says Mopus, shifting rotten books from the pile on his desk until he finds the volume he’s after. It’s a slim portfolio of prints and sketches and as he flicks through them he laughs. ‘Have you seen the thing?’ He jabs one of his crooked fingers at a particularly disturbing painting. It shows thousands of daemonic beings boiling in a vast pool of blood, surrounded by a rim of brass. Even so crudely rendered the daemons make a shocking sight.

I look away from the painting and he smiles at me again, making his face even more skull-like. ‘I imagine your new friends did not explain the whole story, did they?’ He traces his finger over the text beneath the image and reads aloud. ‘ Beneath the ruins of the Nomad City stands the Crucible of Blood. It is an enormous brass skull. It is a gruesome relic of an ancient war, filled with the blood of a thousand mortals. It is charged with the power of the Lord of Rage. ’

Mopus gives the robed figures a wild-eyed glance, as though expecting a reply. They give none, so he continues.

‘ The skies above the Crucible of Blood are filled with the drifting fragments of the Nomad City. The ruins may once have been a great civilisation or perhaps, a single, fortified structure, crafted by forgotten beings in the time before Chaos. ’

Mopus shakes his head in wonder as he stares at the painting. Then he turns to me, his eyes narrowing. ‘What have you got yourself embroiled in, young Boreas?’

So he doesn’t know everything; his omniscience clearly doesn’t stretch as far as the Celestial City. He doesn’t seem to know the significance of the crucible. So much has changed since we last met. Mopus, the great scholar of our age, is ignorant of our prize. His books have finally failed him.

He leans across his desk and, as he moves, his thin, parchment skin slides over his ribs. He peers through the eyeholes of my mask and runs one of his bony digits across the golden sigmarite of my armour, tracing the contours and sacred runes. ‘A uniform.’ The idea seems to amuse him and he glances mischievously at the figures in the shadows. ‘Boreas has joined a regiment.’

I say nothing.

‘But he has become no less taciturn,’ he laughs, flopping back into his chair and spreading his arms. ‘What do you want, boy?’

‘I do value your advice, Mopus, and I need your help.’

He keeps smiling but I sense that he also wears a mask. Behind that smile he’s worried. Another sign of how much things have changed. I can’t remember ever seeing fear in him before. He looks from me to the painting of the Crucible of Blood and then back at me again.

‘We all need help, Boreas,’ he says. ‘There’s still magic in the fane that those Chaos wretches could never hope to comprehend, but it’s failing.’ He grimaces and looks at his empty palms. ‘You know I have no appetite for war, but I have been forced to prepare for it just the same. I fear my solitude may soon be taken from me.’

I nod, thinking of the pale legions I saw in the valley.

‘And, after all these centuries, my second sight is failing.’ He waves his hand. The gesture draws a column of letters from the pages on his desk and they begin to whirl and spin. Mopus licks his ink-stained fingertips and jabs them at the luminous characters. After a while, images appear in the storm of words. I see Tylos and the others, battling furiously, trapped in the heart of the Anvil. I lean closer, trying to discern details.

‘They won’t break through.’ Mopus stares at the images, fascinated. ‘I can still see that much. Not without my help. Which, of course, is why you came.’ He peers at the tiny gold figures. ‘But what are they? I have scoured my libraries for a clue but found nothing.’ He turns to me, looking at my armour again. It must be galling for the great collector to see such an unfamiliar design. ‘What’s happening, Boreas? What have you become?’

‘The Age of Chaos is over.’ I try to keep my voice flat and impassive, but the words ring out through the darkness. ‘The Celestial Gates have opened, Mopus. The Lord of Storms has returned.’

Mopus licks his thin, cracked lips and glances at his shadowy entourage. ‘Sigmar?’ He frowns. ‘If that were true — if you are really his vengeful host — this is not the most impressive crusade, is it? You’re trapped in the Anvil, miles from the Crucible of Blood.’

‘We were thrown off course. We should have landed in the ruins of the Nomad City, right at the foot of the Crucible, but the storm was sent astray and we landed in the borderlands. We should already have completed our mission.’ I glance at him. ‘We were betrayed.’

‘So, Sigmar’s great homecoming ends with a whimper, just because you got lost?’ He softens his voice. ‘Come home, Boreas. Take off that ridiculous suit. Study with me, as you did before. Since you left, I’ve collected treasures you can’t imagine. Why get yourself embroiled in the wars of gods? They’ve always fought and they always will, but only we get killed. They’re not like us, Boreas. They don’t care about us. And there’s still so much to do here — so much to learn. There is knowledge here that you couldn’t dream of. If you joined me we could survive a hundred wars.’

‘Survival isn’t enough,’ I say calmly. ‘Murder and cruelty can’t just be ignored. Things have to change, and we have to change them. I won’t hide any more.’ I nod at the image of Tylos and the other Stormcast Eternals. ‘This is just a fragment. You’re seeing the tiniest glimpse of what will follow. We’re a raindrop at the cusp of a great storm.’

He keeps staring at me and I sense that I’ve touched something in him — some vestigial spark of honour. Then he slumps back into his chair.

‘I’ve lived too long to follow heroes, Boreas. I tried that once before. Their failure caused me more pain than all the gods combined. Change is not so easily brought about. I could get you past the Anvil, but I can’t see why I should. You’ve made it clear I no longer have your allegiance.’

For years I’ve suppressed my disappointment in him, the fury I felt at our final parting, but now it boils out of me. ‘You’re not the things you own, Mopus. You are not dead. You have knowledge and possessions here that could make a difference. You could end the suffering of thousands if you dared to apply the things you have learned. But you hide yourself away here, studying life so that you don’t have to live it.’

His expression hardens as I dig at the old wound. An awkward silence fills the room and I see something dangerous in his eyes. I curse my lack of tact — my anger may have cost me everything.

‘You’re not so changed, Boreas,’ he says after a while, staring at my armour. ‘For all your grand words, you still have an eye for interesting trinkets.’ He points at the box hanging from my waist. ‘You’ve not taken your hand away from that toy since you arrived.’ He studies the runes around its base. A few lonely threads of colour start pulsing in his cheeks. ‘It looks almost as old as I am. How important you must be that your new masters decorate you with such baubles.’