Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

I grab my honour scrolls and recite the runes. Pain may be my flesh. Death may be my fate. But victory is my name.

I know that Sigmar would not send me here without hope. I just need to look harder. I need to find Sigmar’s face in the darkness. I need to hear his voice. His voice … I remember the ghostly cry still circling my head and finally recognise something that has been at the edge of my consciousness since we reached the Nomad City. The dead titan is not howling in pain, but frustration. He sounds as though he is forever trapped in sight of a prize that’s just out of reach. It’s like he’s calling me to witness something.

I look around, trying to locate the source of the cries, and my eyes settle on the white tower at the top of the stone wing — the soaring, graceful neck of marble that rises away from me into the clouds.

Vourla’s still staring at me and follows my gaze to the tower.

‘It’s too late,’ she says, sounding almost angry at my persistence. ‘I’ve murdered you.’

I place a hand on her shoulder. ‘You’re no murderer.’

She closes her eyes, holding back tears. ‘Why did you come?’

‘The Crucible of Blood is a gate between two worlds. It leads to the heart of Khorne’s realm. It leads to the birthplace of his whole empire. This skull feeds his armies. Every dawn, when Khurnac pounds that axe, he sends fresh legions. We have to—’

My words are interrupted as Khurnac strikes the skull again, vomiting more daemons onto the already swamped skeletons. I start to imagine what must have become of my men, then crush the thought before it can take hold. I’ll grieve when the realmgate is sealed.

‘We have to close it,’ I say, I racing up the steps towards the tower with Vourla and Sardicus rushing after me.

‘Lord-Celestant!’ cries Sardicus. ‘What about the Kuriat? The Lord-Relictor has the key to the realmgate and he’s still on the far side of the crater. If he’s even alive, daemons and the dead lie between him and us.’

I look back at him and shake my head. ‘The heart has been lost. Boreas bought our passage through the Anvil with it.’

Sardicus falters. ‘Then we will…’ His words trail off as he considers the significance of my words.

‘We can no longer claim the realmgate for Sigmar.’ I lift Grius and turn it so that light plays across the sigmarite. ‘But we have one card left to play.’

Sardicus stands proud despite the fear he must be feeling. ‘You will not go alone.’

Words will not suffice. I grasp his hand in silence.

He glances down at the boiling ocean of daemons where my army once stood. ‘But how will we get to the gates?’

I turn back to the tower, sure that Sigmar is already giving me the answer. The voice of the dead titans is so loud here that I can feel it buffeting against me. The more I listen, the more sure I am that this is a message from the God-King.

The tower is a stone shell, with no stairs and, as I step inside, I see that it’s open to the sky. Sunlight beats down on me through vast, serpentine windows, blinding me.

I hold Grius up to block the light and, as my vision clears, I look back through the centuries into the Age of Myth.

Overhead, one of the giant ghosts is clearly visible, frozen in the midst of a heroic dive; preserved at the moment of his death. The sunlight beats through his vaporous flesh and I can see clouds through his billowing spear, but his eyes are as fierce and vital as my own. They’re locked on something below, something on the Crucible of Blood. He’s showing me something; calling to me.

‘Carry me,’ I say.

Sardicus spreads his wings, flooding the ruins with light.

I place my hand on Vourla’s arm. ‘The time has come. Rise up and reclaim your home.’

‘Me?’ She looks from me to Sardicus, baffled.

‘You stood face to face with the enemy, Vourla, and you still found a way to fight. Find others and teach them to do the same. We didn’t come simply to close a gate. We came to start a landslide.’

She laughs in disbelief, but I can see a fire starting to kindle in her eyes. I’ve done enough.

The tower whirls around us as Sardicus lifts me up through the ruins, surrounding us with images. I see faces in the marble, heroic and proud, beings born in an age free of monsters like Hakh. They seem at once distant and recognisable. I see the same fire in their eyes that I saw in Vourla’s. Centuries of brutal oppression have not dampened it.

‘Lord-Celestant,’ says Sardicus, and I realise that my mind has been wandering. There’s something hypnotic about these ruins and the cry of the ghost.

Sardicus draws my attention to the figure looming overhead. We’ve almost reached the spectre of the dead titan. His cries are heartbreaking in their desperation. Wisps of armour trail around his gargantuan form and he roars as he tries, endlessly, to launch his spear.

‘Closer!’ I shout, struggling to be heard over the ghost’s cries. ‘Take me closer.’

Sardicus hurls us into the miasma of the giant’s flesh.

The effect is instant, and shocking. The crumbling ruins vanish, replaced by a dazzling array of colours and shapes. I’m seeing the Nomad City through the eyes of the ghost. The walls are covered with beautiful murals of gold and ochre and the rooms are capped with ornate ceilings. Enormous pieces of furniture are all around me, gilded and gleaming, and the air smells clean and pure. It’s no idyll though. Hundreds of titans are tumbling backwards past me, roaring in anger and fury, swarming with vicious, crimson daemons. They’re being devoured by a host of hunched, scaled monstrosities with anvil-shaped heads and gaping jaws. The giants are attempting to defend themselves, but it’s clear that the battle is already lost. Their strange, inhuman faces are tormented by fear and anger as the daemons flood over them in uncountable numbers, clawing and devouring like a plague of locusts.

Even over the din of battle, I can hear the voice of my host-spirit. His language is strange and incoherent, but I can feel the dreadful urgency in his cries. As I look out from his mind I finally see what he’s been trying to reach for all these centuries. As the daemons tear him apart, shredding his flesh with frantic, snarling mouths, the giant’s gaze is fixed on a goal he’ll never reach.

Of course.

My heart quickens as I see what I must do.

The stink of charred flesh greets me as I return. I feel Sardicus struggling to hold me aloft as we fly up through the top of the ruined tower and out into the clouds.

Beneath us, the crater is a seething mass of red shapes but the skull has not finished its work yet. Blood-red figures are pouring over the lip at the skull’s crown, from its nose and from the doorway beneath its teeth. There must be thousands of daemons, tumbling over the rocks and charging to war. Some of them resemble the things I saw through the eyes of the titan, but others assume forms I cannot even describe — mongrel things that combine the canine and the reptile into something obscene.

And, over all of this pandemonium, Khurnac still rages, smashing its colossal axe against the walls of its brass prison and roaring in fury. Every blow spews another glut of daemons from the crucible and, as they tumble into the world, Khurnac turns its fury on its own kind, tearing apart anything it can lay its claws on, cramming visions of madness between its slavering jaws.

Reality has given up trying to contain such overwhelming corruption. The world beyond the daemon is like a tattered curtain, revealing glimpses of a landscape even more tormented than the Kharvall Steppe. This is now my destination — the Blood God’s foothold in the Mortal Realms.