Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

Only one certainty was firm in his mind. That was the nature of the weapon he carried. He’d felt the thrill of the warhammer’s power, the awesome potential lurking within it. A sense of abject reverence flowed through him as he reflected upon the great honour that had been entrusted to him. In his hands he held Ghal Maraz itself, the godhammer of Sigmar! He could feel that truth in every mote of his soul, every speck of his essence.

Such then was his purpose. More than warrior or hero, he was Sigmar’s champion. The duty entrusted to him was bestowed by the God-King himself.

If only he could remember what that duty was.

The light was nearly spent before the warrior reached the edge of the swamp. Rising up from the silvery streams and islands of spineferns was scrubland. Clumps of ugly grey bushes with branches like wire and gaudy flowers of turquoise and emerald lay strewn about the plain. Here and there heaps of boulders and mounds of rock lay piled, each stone exhibiting a riotous range of colours in the swirls and whorls that marked them.

The warrior hesitated as he climbed out of the swamp. Carefully he studied the terrain before him. A weird sense of familiarity nagged at him, but nothing that resonated with conviction. Perhaps if his eyes could pierce the cloying mists that swept across the horizon in great undulations, then he might find his way.

Gazing into the dingy sky, the warrior shook his head. The temptation to take wing, to soar above the bleak landscape, was great, but so too was the appreciation of the danger such course would invite. From such a lofty vantage he would see leagues across the scrubland, perhaps even past the veil of mists. But he would likewise be seen by such loathsome things as inhabited the plain.

‘Mighty Sigmar, lend me your holy wisdom,’ the warrior prayed. ‘Guide my steps upon the path you have set for me. Show me the way to fulfil the purpose I have been chosen for.’ His hand tightened about the haft of Ghal Maraz, feeling the holy weapon’s power rippling through him. The relic was a connection between himself and his god, a compact between servant and master that resonated through the warrior’s very being. In battle, the powers of Ghal Maraz had asserted themselves with a primacy that was almost instinctual. He had felt the potential of the godhammer, felt rather than known how to evoke the relic’s might. It was a knowledge imprinted not upon his mind, but within his soul itself, something that transcended thought.

The warrior bowed his head in submission. That was the God-King’s answer. Not a mighty roar, not an imperious command writ in letters of fire, but a subtlety etched upon the soul. It was left to him to choose whether to submit or resist, to obey or refuse. If he quietened his thoughts, if he let himself feel rather than question, then he would find the way.

‘I have faith in you, Great Sigmar,’ the warrior declared. ‘I will trust you to lead me, for I understand that doubt is the first chink in the armour of righteousness.’ The curious impulses and inexplicable certainties that rose within him had yet to deceive him. He had to trust that they would continue to lead him true.

The warrior marched across the misty plain, his stride assuming the mile-eating jog of the soldier on campaign. Past windswept spires of crystal and around deep crevices billowing with strange vapours and stranger energies, he pursued the fading light. A dull luminance behind the shroud of mist, a lessening of the gloom that choked the sky, the unseen sun drew him after it like some celestial lodestone. Only the feathered lizards that crawled upon the rocks and the diamond-winged scavenger-flies that buzzed about the grey bushes attended his passing, skittering away as he drew near.

Darkness settled across the plain, the mist blotting out whatever light might be shining from moon and star. Still the warrior kept on, warier in the gloom, vigilant for observers more malignant than lizards and flies. Three times he had been set upon by the scrubland’s monstrous denizens in violent encounters of blood and carnage. The warrior drew no satisfaction from such skirmishes, recognizing them as naught but obstructions between himself and the purpose that drew him on.

Reaching one of the jumbled heaps of stone, the warrior spread his wings and rose into the sky. Keeping close to the jagged mound, he used the crumbling peaks to hide his presence. By staying close to the rocks, however, he exposed himself to unexpected danger. Sudden downdrafts buffeted him, seeking to sweep him into the knife-edged stones. He could see great polypus shapes wedged among the rocks, obscene growths that were at once both fungal and mineral. Like huge bladders, the growths expanded and contracted, sucking in great draughts, drawing nourishment from the air.

The warrior struggled against the pull of the fungal growths. A confusion of currents weakened his resistance. Opposing the draw of one cluster of growths would send him spiralling into the drag of another. His armour rang as it glanced across jagged heaps, sending trickles of broken rocks rumbling down the cliff.

Folding his wings against his back, the warrior caught hold of the rocks. If he couldn’t soar above the heap, then he would climb over it. Clawing handholds, he defied the dragging suction of the fungus and pulled himself across the face of the cliff.

As he climbed, the warrior’s keen senses caught the patter of dislodged rocks somewhere below him. He lingered, waiting for any new sound that might betray the presence of a pursuer. When none came after several minutes, he pressed on. Whatever was following him might reasonably suspect that the warrior had decided the betraying sounds were mere imagination or some caprice of the wind being drawn down into the fungal growths.

The warrior was content to lull his stalker into such belief. He knew what he’d heard and he knew what it meant. As he descended the other side of the crag, he kept his senses trained on the rise, waiting for anything that would expose the approach of his hunter. For just an instant, from the corner of his eye, he saw the drift of shadow among the rocks, a shape that had started forwards and then furtively withdrawn.

Just as suddenly as the shadow withdrew back into the rocks, a cry of anguish rang out. There was terror and despair in that cry, but there was something more, something that caused the warrior below to spread his wings and dare the dragging currents of the rock-fungus.

The cry had been human.

Reaching a height above the ridge, the warrior’s keen gaze pierced the shadows below. He saw a lean figure draped in a wispy cloak of grey languishing upon a plateau. The shape was caught in the grip of a squamous, monstrous thing. It seemed kindred to the fungal growths, yet endowed with a ghastly animation. Great stalks of squirming, fibrous material undulated from the mass, coiling around the cloaked figure in a constricting mesh of tendrils. Inch by inch, the horror’s tentacles were drawing its captive towards a slavering maw.

The imprisoned figure struggled to free itself. It gave a wail of frustration and despair.

The warrior didn’t delay. Folding his wings at his sides, he powered down towards the tableau in a dive. The might of Ghal Maraz blazed forth as he brought the relic slamming down against the horror. The obscenity burst apart in a splash of purplish ichor and pulp, its tendrils falling slack as the monster’s vitality evaporated.

The figure quickly pulled away, flinging the remains aside in disgust. Beneath the wispy web-like cloak there was a man, lean and lanky, yet with a hardness and firmness that suggested considerable strength and endurance. The face that stared from beneath the threads of his hood was thin and drawn with deepset eyes that shone with the brilliance of gemstones. His expression was one of resignation, of utter despair, uncountable worries etched into the wrinkled brow.