Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

I back away, keeping a protective hand over the relic, and curse myself for revealing its importance.

I sink into one of the spectral figures. While we’ve been talking, they’ve formed a circle around the desk. They’re as cold and cruel as the spirit hosts outside. I struggle but I can’t force my way through and I’m reluctant to fight in front of Mopus. I turn to face the spirit. Its hood is deep but I see a gleam of skinless bone and grinning, bleached teeth.

It shoves me back towards Mopus with surprising strength.

‘Are we enemies, then?’ I growl, looking back to Mopus and glaring from behind my mask.

He still has a troubling brightness in his eyes. ‘Far from it. In fact, I’m beginning to think I might be able to help you. There’s more to life than friendship, after all.’ He stares at the bell jar. ‘If that’s as important as you obviously think it is, perhaps you have more bargaining power than you realise.’

‘Mopus,’ I growl, unable to hide my anger. ‘This means nothing to you!’

He laughs without smiling and I see that I’ve lost all hope of reasoning with him.

‘By the gods,’ he says. ‘You are eager to keep it. It must be very special. Why were you never this interesting when you were hanging off my coat tails?’

I can see his pulse racing angrily beneath his translucent skin. ‘If you give me that trinket,’ he continues, ‘the Anvil will be nothing more than a bad memory. You and your shiny soldiers can march on to fight whatever hopeless battles you choose. In fact, I’ll ensure your safe passage to the very mouth of the Crucible of Blood. Nothing shall bar your way. I’ll see to it. My reach is long. I’m sure you remember that much about me.’

‘Anything else,’ I say.

The fury in my voice just makes his eyes gleam all the more.

I feel like smashing the room apart. Without the Kuriat, capturing the Crucible of Blood will be impossible. Sigmar’s artisans spent years forging an icon that could reclaim the realmgate, and I know Mopus is only demanding it through spite. He has no idea of its true worth.

I’m about to storm out when I see the swirling image of battle still raging over Mopus’ desk. Tylos and the others are fighting with all the nobility and heroism I would expect, but the wall of blood warriors before them is impenetrable and growing larger all the time. Khorne’s legions are flooding from the surrounding towers, cramming the courtyard with a forest of axes. My head pounds. To give away the Kuriat means defeat, but Mopus is my only chance at breaking that bloody deadlock. For all his faults, Mopus is not a liar. If he says he will ensure our passage, then he will. If I refuse, Tylos will still be mired in battle when the sun comes up. And then all will be lost anyway.

When Mopus speaks again, his voice is cold and flat. ‘If the God-King is all you believe him to be, Boreas, what does it matter? Is there any deal you can make here that will hold him back?’

He’s mocking me, but he’s right. We must survive the Anvil and there is another way. ‘Forgive me, Tylos,’ I mutter as I unclasp the bell jar from my belt. I stare at it for a moment then reluctantly drop it into the necromancer’s grasping hands, whispering a prayer as I do so.

He tears off the lid and stares at the still-beating lump of black meat.

‘What will you do to the Anvil?’ I demand, all thoughts of friendship forgotten. ‘When will we be free to advance?’

He gives me a brief, unreadable look, before turning back to his desk and his endless reading. ‘It’s done. You should hurry. You’re missing all the fun.’

Sigmar’s light envelops me, blazing white, blue and finally crimson as it cooks our enemy alive. As the paladins advance in their hulking, star-forged armour they dwarf the surrounding Liberators, and each blow from their massive lightning hammers rocks the courtyard, scattering blood warriors and smashing craters in the ground. They look like gods torn from the heavens and as I lead them into the enemy, the ground shatters beneath their wrath. Hundreds of my Liberators are wounded, limping and staggering as they lash out with their hammers, but they hold their formations and advance close behind us.

Zarax tenses beneath me and unleashes another bolt of celestial fire. Finally we’re making some headway. The lines of Chaos knights are thinning and drawing back. The paladins are clearly too much for them. I wave the army on as Zarax tears into the reeling enemy warriors.

Only at the last minute do I realise that this is too easy; too quick. My instinct screams out at me that we’re being tricked and I shout an order, halting the advance.

As the Liberators lock their shield walls back into place, I see that I was right. The space that opened up before us is not the sign of a retreat. The smirking Chaos champion is ordering the bulk of his army to back away from us, making way for some new strategy. He barks out a command and his army parts, creating an avenue of armour and axes.

The ground judders as though a stampede is approaching. From my vantage point on Zarax’s back, I am the first to see the cause of the thundering sound.

Hundreds of skinless horrors charge from the opening in the enemy ranks, pounding across the courtyard towards us. They’re all eight or nine feet tall and lashed in glistening, blood-slick muscle. Tentacles burst from their raw, wound-like flesh as they hurtle towards our lines. We now have blood warriors on either flank and these newcomers charging us head on.

I act fast, ordering the Prosecutors into the fray. Drusus leads them over the battlements, dodging blasts of crimson from the walls as he hurls his lightning-charged hammers at the monsters.

More detonations rock the Anvil and the world turns white, but when the blaze dims, the monsters are still there. I manage to cry ‘Charge!’ seconds before they wade into us.

Revolting tentacles lash out from their armoured shoulders, hammering down against our rows of shields. Dozens of Liberators are forced to their knees but others rush to take their place.

Zarax does not wait for me to spur her on; she bounds forwards, crashing through the golden ranks of Stormcast Eternals and fastening her jaws around the head of the nearest monster. I bring Grius down into the head of another and, as it reels away from me, trailing blood from its obscene maw, a paladin pounds through the crush and lands his blazing, two-handed hammer between its cloven feet.

The creature is eviscerated, but the explosion also jolts Zarax to one side; she staggers, almost throwing me from her back.

Bodies crash into my steed and the echo of the blast grows louder. The ground shakes harder as the noise becomes a deafening rumble and I ride on through the scrum of bodies.

The monsters have forced us back through the archway. Hundreds of my men are now outside the Anvil, being driven slowly back towards the Field of Blades.

I yell a command but my words are drowned out by the rumbling noise. It sounds like the world is being torn in half. The tremor is now so violent that the walls around the gatehouse are crumbling and splitting. I look up, expecting to see the crimson moon overhead again, but the sky is empty.

Then I see Drusus. His incandescent wings hurl him through the darkness, lighting up the expressionless masks of the other Prosecutors.

‘Pull back!’ he cries, catching sight of me.

I shake my head, outraged by the suggestion of retreat, but then look up in shock. Weapons and shields are lowered as everyone in the passageway takes in the bizarre sight unfolding within the Anvil.

The cloud-high spikes that jut out of the watchtowers have started to move and the battle is forgotten as we all turn to stare. The rumbling is now so loud the cause is unmistakable: the Kharvall Steppe is in the grip of an earthquake. The huge talons around which the Anvil has been built are juddering like wind-lashed trees. We’re forced back, reeling out of the passageway as it collapses around us, filling the air with dust and spinning fragments of rock. A few hundred of the Chaos knights stagger into the Field of Blades with us and we quickly despatch them, but most remain trapped in the huge crush of bodies that fills the courtyard.