Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

The Celestant-Prime was silent, wondering what manner of fate had claimed the Thriceblessed. If they’d been defeated in battle, then they would have been Reforged in Sigmaron, yet such had not been the case. That meant they were still here, lost within the Prismatic King’s maze.

The Celestant-Prime let his hand fall to the Cometstrike Sceptre hanging from his belt, feeling the destructive potential woven within its enchantments, the might to devastate armies. To depose the Prismatic King was his purpose, of that he was certain. He could feel that imperative echoing in his very bones. Yet to leave his brothers, to leave the Thriceblessed locked within the tyrant’s trap for even a moment longer, was something that sickened his spirit. His first duty was to his fellow warriors, to free them from the doom that had claimed them.

‘This maze,’ the Celestant-Prime said. ‘You can lead me to it?’

‘To what purpose?’ Throl asked. ‘That you can join the others in the Prismatic King’s trap? There is no defeating him. He is too devious, too cunning to overcome. This land is lost to him.’

The warrior glared down at the wizard. ‘Those are the words of a coward.’

‘No, they are the words of one who has clung to hope too long,’ Throl replied. ‘Hope can only cheat a man for so long before he understands that it is naught but a cruel illusion. It is the fool and the dreamer who refuses to abandon hope when it has abandoned him.’ He turned his head, staring out into the misty scrubland. ‘When I saw the warhost march against the Prismatic King I had hope. Forgive me if I have none left to spare for you, Ghal Maraz.’ He thrust his arm towards the south. ‘If you would find the Maze of Reflection, seek it there beyond the fires of Uthyr.’

The Celestant-Prime gazed off towards the south. ‘A guide would speed my journey,’ he said. ‘I do not ask you to brave the maze, only to show me the way.’

‘That would draw me nearer to the Prismatic King’s Eyrie,’ Throl said. ‘It is a fool who tempts fate too far.’

‘What of the debt you owe me?’ Ghal Maraz asked. He pointed at the fungal husk. ‘Were the men of Shaard a people with honour? Or were they no better than the beasts that have claimed their lands?’

The wizard glowered at the golden warrior. ‘You save my life only to throw it away again,’ he stated. ‘You would march into the heart of the Prismatic King’s domain.’

‘Is a life spent hiding in swamps and eating snails so precious to you?’ the Celestant-Prime wondered.

‘A man doesn’t choose his life, only the manner of his death,’ Throl said.

Ghal Maraz nodded. ‘There is wisdom in those words, wizard, but you are too afraid to recognize it.’

Throl stamped his foot against one of the tendrils lying on the plateau, grinding it beneath his heel. ‘You would shame me into following you,’ he said.

‘I need your knowledge of these lands,’ the Celestant-Prime told him. ‘Shame and dignity are riddles for your own conscience to decide.’

The wizard bowed his head in defeat. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I am weary of lurking in the shadows. Whether to doom or glory, I cannot say, but I will lead you to whatever fate has decreed.’

The bleak scrubland of the plain rose into crystalline hills of chromatic splendour. Eerie nimbuses of light spilled from each facet, forming into broad strands of phantasmal substance, as transient and fragile as cobwebs. Hulking growths, neither tree nor stone but a riotous assemblage of both, thrust their way up through the rainbow webs. Pulpy fruit swayed from the craggy branches of the treestones, dropping to the ground in explosive displays of flame and smoke, gouging deep fissures in the crystal mounds.

Throl was able to steer the Celestant-Prime away from the more dangerous treestones, his magic giving him warning when the explosive fruit was ripe and ready to fall. The vapours that billowed up from the fissures, however, were a hazard that couldn’t be predicted. Several times the wizard had been forced to evoke a hasty spell to send the caustic emanations back into the crystalline depths.

‘The bloodreavers used to collect the fruit of the treestones,’ Throl explained, ‘but the gasses from below made them stop.’ He pointed at several curious spurs of crystal scattered about the edges of the fissure. ‘Those were men who tarried too long among the vapour. If you draw too near to them, you can still hear their moans.’

The Celestant-Prime shook his head. For expediency he had told Throl to lead him by the most direct route to the Maze of Reflection, but to guide him by such paths as the minions of the Prismatic King were unlikely to frequent. He didn’t fear battle with the hordes of Chaos, but he couldn’t accept the delay such combat would cause. It was why he continued to march rather than take to the sky and betray his presence.

Yet for all that, the hostility of this corrupted terrain made the Celestant-Prime wonder if the dangers of this course outweighed the potential gain. Throl had led him through canyons of porous bronze inhabited by birds with beaks of ice. They’d trekked through a desert where the sand was iron and the sky a bilious green, with vast slug-like behemoths surging through the desolation to feast upon creeks of molten glass.

The warrior wondered what this region had been like before the Prismatic King focused the corruption of Chaos upon it. The Realm of Chamon and all its many lands were known for strange transmutations, the alloying of substances into something new. How firm had Shaard’s grip upon permanence been? How transitory had been the essence of that vanquished empire?

‘This domain has no limit to its horrors,’ the Celestant-Prime remarked, nodding to one of the crystalline statues, a groan of anguish whispering from its frozen face. ‘How dear your thirst for vengeance must be. I pity you, Throl, for your memories of what these lands once were.’

Throl paused, staring out towards the horizon, across the shimmering expanse of hills.

‘Memory fades,’ he said. ‘It retreats into shadow, becoming naught but an echo after a time.’ His eyes were solemn as he looked to his companion. ‘When it is buried deeply enough, memory becomes confused with imagination.’ The wizard pointed his finger at the most distant of the hills. ‘Did the vineyards of the Brothers Kaltos stretch there once, or perhaps it was the fastness of the Knights Ebon? Perhaps there was nothing. Maybe what I think to have been never was at all.’ He kicked his foot against the crystalline ground, tiny flakes crackling beneath his toes. ‘Of what consequence is it to remember? It can’t change what is.’

The Celestant-Prime looked at the hills, trying to imagine grapes and castles as Throl described. He pondered his own sense of familiarity with the lands of Shaard.

‘No,’ he conceded after a time, ‘memory may not change things back to what they were. But memory can kindle the flame that avenges what was. If you didn’t have your memories of a vanquished people and a vanished home, would you have the courage to guide me? Do not belittle the power of remembering.’

The wizard bowed his head. ‘There is wisdom in your words,’ he said. ‘I will reflect upon what you have said.’ Throl tapped the side of his head. ‘For now, I fear we must test the limits of memory. Beyond these hills I think we should find the Daemon’s Hopyard.’

As he heard the name, the Celestant-Prime felt an inexplicable familiarity. His mind was filled with an image of strange columns of wind-carved rock and great mesas of basalt and onyx. He could almost hear the eerie whistle of winged rock-rats gliding from the cliffs and smell the pungent tang of flowering weeds rising from the loamy earth.