Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

Air explodes from my lungs as we crash into a wall. The woman and I roll across marble steps and the monster spins off through the clouds, dazed by the impact.

I glance around and see that we’ve smashed into one of the drifting fragments of the Nomad City, a vast, broken wing of white marble, the feathers of which spiral up towards a white, crumbling eagle’s neck.

The monster soars away and I charge after it. Pain fills my head, causing me to stumble as I climb the steps. The song of the ghosts is deafening now that I am actually in the ruins. It’s as though the soul of the Nomad City is all around me. I stagger and only manage to stop a few inches from the edge of the wing. My stomach turns as I look out over a mile-high drop.

As I back away from the edge, the bone monster dives back towards me with its sword raised.

I draw Evora and, to my relief, the runeblade’s otherworldly song eases the agony in my head, drowning out a little of the ghost’s pain.

I easily dodge the monster’s blade and plunge Evora into its chest as it smashes into me.

The sword passes cleanly through the empty ribcage and I only succeed in jamming the hilt between the bones. We roll across the marble wing, locked together as we clang and clatter towards the precipice.

Seconds from the edge I manage to draw Evora from the monster’s chest and bring her round in a wide arc, slicing through one of the monster’s shoulder blades and hacking part of its wing off.

The monster opens its weird, bat-like jaws and mouths a silent scream.

I throw all my momentum into a hammer-blow, smashing Grius into its chest and sending the creature tumbling through the clouds in a rain of broken bones.

The bone monster loops and prepares to launch another attack, but before it can, it pauses in midair, beating its wings as it looks down on me from the clouds, suddenly unwilling to attack. For a moment, it hangs there staring at me, then it banks away and dives back towards the battle below.

I stagger to the edge of the ruins and look down across the fighting.

‘Now what have you done, Boreas?’ I mutter as I see what’s happening. The vast army of skeletons is no longer battling my army. They’re charging towards the skull instead, rushing to engage the crimson host that is tearing its way into the world. I can only assume this is another sign of my brother’s burgeoning power.

As Evora’s kill-song dies away, the giant’s cries hit me with redoubled force, driving me back to my knees. The pain centres on the eye that Boreas healed, and blood is rushing from my golden mask again.

‘Let me help,’ says a voice.

I lurch to my feet, readying Grius for another blow, and see Hakh’s woman rushing towards me. Her skin is pulsing with sorcery and her eyes are featureless white orbs, but, as before, I sense that she means me no harm.

The lights in her skin fade and the colour returns to her eyes as she reaches my side and places her hands on my mask.

She sings a few quiet words and blessed relief pours through my skull. I can still hear the ghosts’ lament, but it’s just a sound now. The horrendous pain is gone.

‘I’m Vourla,’ she says, looking at my scorched, dented armour. Dawn blazes across the metal, dazzling her as she tries to look at me. ‘What are you ?’

I study her in silence.

She backs away from me, looking anxious.

‘You need not fear me,’ I say, sheathing Evora and holding out a hand. ‘You came to my aid. I owe you a debt.’

She looks away, as though in pain. ‘You owe me nothing.’

I shake my head, confused, and follow her up the steps of the stone wing.

There’s a clatter of metal as Prosecutor Sardicus lands on the ruins. He folds his blazing wings and rushes towards us.

I’m about to greet him when I see a shocking sight. The brass skull is now aflame with morning light, but I’m blind to anything beyond the figure rising from the open top of the cranium. A crimson horror is drawing itself up from the boiling blood. As hundreds of lesser daemons flood from the skull’s mouth, a mountain-sized nightmare is rising from its open crown. The world unravels before its unholy power. Colours and shapes tumble into each other, forming a rippling kaleidoscope.

As the daemon, Khurnac, drags itself into the world I see black, canine flesh and vast, blood-red wings. Looking upon such perversion turns my stomach but I refuse to avert my gaze. Such virulent, blasphemous hate cannot be ignored.

‘I did this to you,’ says Vourla, sounding appalled.

She’s sitting on the edge of a crumbling step, paying no attention to the daemons, but staring at me.

‘Why did you save me if you despise me so?’ I say, managing to shield my thoughts from the abomination forming below us.

She shakes her head. ‘I don’t hate you. I just didn’t believe…’ Her words trail off. ‘It’s only now I see you that I understand.’ She stares at me again and her voice fills with panic. ‘I never considered that you might actually have a hope.’ She rises to her feet, shaking her head furiously. ‘ I sent your storm astray. I did this to you. I still had a remnant of power in me and I saw a chance to use it before I died. I thought that you were doomed whatever happened, so why not use you before you met the same fate as all the others?’

Rage jolts through me as I realise what she’s saying. ‘You delayed us?’ I glance at the skull. Khurnac is beginning to thrash and grow. The blood that spews from its movements forms limbs and jaws as it drops. The hordes of the Blood God are here.

‘I couldn’t let Hakh live,’ she replies, talking to herself rather than me. ‘Not after so much pain, so much cruelty.’

‘So you used me as your executioner? And delayed Sigmar’s vengeance?’

My body is shaking with fury and I see that Sardicus is the same. I draw Evora as we walk towards the dazed woman.

Vourla makes no attempt to flee, she just nods her head in shame, waiting for my blade.

The runeblade lifts its voice in reply to my bloodlust. I’m hardly conscious of raising it but, as I near the priestess, I see myself reflected in her terrified eyes and pause. I look like every other monster in this pitiful ruin of a world. I look like the man I was long ago.

‘No.’ I lower the sword and back away. Not that. Of all the ways I could fail Sigmar, I would not become the thing he sent me to kill. I sense that this is the power of the skull at work. It’s twisting my thoughts.

‘I won’t harm you,’ I say, turning my back on the Crucible of Blood. ‘I’m here to save you.’

She looks up at me, her eyes full of tears and confusion. ‘But can’t you see?’ She nods at the scene below. ‘There’s nothing to save. It’s too late.’

Khurnac is wrenching its brimstone flesh from side to side, straining against an enormous chain that binds it to the rim around the skull’s open crown. An axe has formed in its claws — a weapon that must be thirty or forty feet long. As the daemon thrashes around it slams the axe against the walls of the skull, consumed by an immemorial fury, attempting to hack itself free. Every blow sends out a dull, tuneless clang and each one heralds the arrival of hundreds more daemons. They’re flowing from the skull in a crimson tide and pouring into the crater below. Through gaps in the clouds I see them scampering and sprinting into the ranks of skeletons. Nothing can stand against them. The undead crumble like kindling and, wherever my Stormcast Eternals are, I know that even their sigmarite shields will not stand against this. Clang after clang tolls out and the torrent becomes a storm. The writhing, ephemeral shapes become a vast wall of hate, pounding down into the crater.