Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

The figures in the mirrors weren’t static images. He could see them marching, searching, struggling within the weird limbo behind the mirror. They were trying to find a way out, but their efforts never drew them any closer to the glass. Whatever they attempted, to the observer on the outside the warriors remained the same distance away. From their actions, the Celestant-Prime decided that they couldn’t see the glass, much less the world beyond it.

‘This is sorcery beyond any mortal,’ said Throl, shuddering as he joined the Celestant-Prime and looked upon the mirrors. ‘This is the magic of Tzeentch himself. Imperious and incontestable.’

‘It can be beaten,’ declared the Celestant-Prime. He gestured to the Stormcasts. ‘These warriors slipped free of the maze. That means this magic does have a weakness, whether it comes from Tzeentch or simply one of the Deceiver’s minions. There is a weakness.’

Even as he spoke, the Celestant-Prime saw the mirrors begin to shift, spinning across the walls, sinking from upper tiers to lower ones, ascending from beneath the floor to take a new position far above. It was a bewildering, disorienting display, like watching the world slide onto its side and then turn itself over again. Deucius staggered, overwhelmed by a sickening revulsion. The rest of the Thriceblessed outside the mirrors fell to their knees as nausea sapped their constitutions as well. The warriors locked within the mirrors gave no sign that they were aware of the rotation, the grey nothingness behind the glass unfazed by the shifting spin of its frame.

The revolving mirrors began to show other shapes now, captives far different from the noble Stormcasts. Behind some of the mirrors loomed the putrescent bulks of gigantic plague daemons, their antlers festooned with decaying carcasses of men and beasts. Lascivious monstrosities with snapping claws and supple bodies leered seductively from their magic prisons. A great rat-like thing with thirteen horns scrabbled against the glass, trying to gnaw at its cell with fangs of iron. Warlords and sorcerers, men and monsters, daemons and the abominable undead, all these had tried to oppose the Prismatic King during his tyrannical reign, and all had been consumed by his Maze of Reflection.

Something caught the Celestant-Prime’s eye as it went whirring past, revolving and spinning away amidst the confusion of panels. A bare pane amidst the riot of images assailing his senses, an emptiness that stood stark and clear among the clutter of the maze. A single mirror that didn’t have a captive locked behind its glass. Instead there was a jagged crack that snaked down its face. A memory, an impulse, made the Celestant-Prime turn and look to the other wall. Again, there was an empty pane, clear and distinct amidst the turmoil of the maze’s reflections. Taking wing, he rose towards the second barren panel. He found the exact same crack running down its glass as the one on the opposite wall. It would have been natural to believe the mirrors to be reflections of one another, but they were too distant from each other for that to be true. They were more than visual echoes of one another. They were more like twins.

An incredible idea rose within the Celestant-Prime’s mind, a thought that nagged at him with the persistence of some half-forgotten experience. He focused upon one of the mirrors holding the Thriceblessed and locked every detail in his mind. Swiftly he swung around and faced the opposite wall, eyes roving across the thousands of shifting mirrors to find the one which would further the theory he had formed. At last he spotted it, far overhead, a mirror that exhibited the exact twin of the scene he had memorized from the first one. Again, the two mirrors were too far apart to simply be reflecting the same image. In some way he didn’t understand yet, they formed a pair, and within that eldritch symmetry was hidden the secret of the maze.

‘Watch the mirrors,’ the Celestant-Prime said to Deucius, raising the warrior to his feet. ‘I am going to try something.’ Deucius nodded, tightening his grip on his weapon. The other Thriceblessed followed his example, ready to lend their own efforts to the Celestant-Prime’s plan.

The Celestant-Prime had just begun to soar towards the first of the mirrors, when he sensed an unsettling change in the air. The atmosphere, already tainted with the chill of sorcery and the stink of mutation, now became pregnant with a smouldering hostility. Turning his gaze below, he saw some of the ever-shifting mirrors begin to slow, their gyrations become more focussed. In a blaze of light, two of the mirrors flared outwards, a hideous form emerging from the midst of that light. Verminous and gigantic, the thirteen-horned rat-beast reared back on its clawed legs and chittered a fierce shriek of jubilation. Its yellow eyes glared about the Maze, fixing upon the Thriceblessed. With a snarl of inhuman malignance, the rat-beast was charging towards the armoured warriors.

Other mirrors now blazed with light, disgorging their own captives, loosing clutches of fiendish creatures against the Stormcasts. The Celestant-Prime whirled around, ready to lend his might to his embattled comrades. Before he could descend, however, his attention was caught by the mirror beside him. Here the glass wasn’t filled with the image of an imprisoned Stormcast. It was a different kind of captive that glared out from the mirror. A vision of hate and fury, its skull-like head sporting great curled horns, its blood-stained body rippling with thick cords of muscle. Vast bat-like wings erupted from its back. Strips of twisted mail and shattered plate hung from its torso, less as armour and more in the fashion of gruesome trophies. Carved into the beast’s forehead was a loathsome symbol, a sign that spoke of havoc and murder throughout the Eight Realms: the rune of Khorne.

The eyes that smouldered within the pits of the daemon’s face were unfocused at first, as unaware of the outer world as the Stormcasts. But then a grisly change came upon them. They shifted and fixated upon the Celestant-Prime, the lipless mouth below them spreading in a malicious leer. The creature could see the Celestant-Prime. It was aware of the world beyond the mirror.

The Celestant-Prime looked across to the other wall just as the whirring rotation of mirrors brought the exact opposite of the daemon’s glass into place. As the two mirrors now faced one another, a terrible rending sound echoed through the Maze. There was a blinding flash and then the two mirrors were spinning away again — only now the glass was empty. The thing that had been held captive was free, soaring towards the Celestant-Prime on its own wings. At a gesture, its clawed hand erupted into a cataract of bubbling gore. The stream lengthened and thickened, spreading out from the monster’s talons. With each heartbeat, the blood coagulated, building successive layers of solidity, assuming the form of a double-headed axe.

The Celestant-Prime darted away as the infernal creature swooped towards him. The thing’s axe slashed through the air in a murderous sweep, flecks of sizzling blood streaming from the grotesque blade. The Celestant-Prime retaliated with a swing of Ghal Maraz, the holy weapon causing the daemon’s flesh to bubble like molten bronze as it grazed past the fiend’s wing.

The daemon threw its head back in a savage howl, pivoting in midair to face its foe. It slashed its axe along its own forearm. Steaming blood dripped from the injury, writhing in a gory rope as it rushed from the wound. Like the axe the beast had formed, the rope quickly thickened, taking on the shape and substance of a barbed whip. The daemon cracked its lash in the air, spattering Ghal Maraz’s golden armour with flecks of blood that steamed against the sigmarite mail.

The Celestant-Prime glared back at the skull-faced daemon, ready to match his righteous fury against the beast’s murderous rage. Before he could, he was struck from behind, a brutal kick smashing into his back and causing him to plummet downwards. As he spun away, he could see a second Khornate daemon, another of the Blood God’s bestial champions, speeding after him, its spiked maul ready to deliver a further treacherous blow.