Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

The first daemon howled, streaking past its comrade to lash at the Celestant-Prime with its whip. The crimson coil wrapped about the hero’s arm, snapping taught as it arrested his fall. For an instant, he hung there as the daemon with the maul came rushing at him. The beast flung its weapon at the Celestant-Prime. Only a rapid twist of his body prevented a more solid contact, as the maul ripped sparks from his armour as it scraped past him.

The second daemon was far from disarmed. It uncoiled a black mass of cord from around its wrist, a ghastly whip fashioned from skulls and sinew. It struck at the Celestant-Prime, trying to bind him.

Swinging back and forth like a pendulum, the Celestant-Prime defied the efforts of the daemons to hold him. The first greater daemon was trying to drag him upwards, but even its prodigious strength was no match for that of Sigmar’s champion. With the brawn of its twin to assist it, the daemon might have succeeded, but the Celestant-Prime was determined to thwart such ambitions. When the swinging motion of his body brought his feet against one of the mirrors, he pushed himself off with a mighty kick, feeding his momentum into an upward drive.

The daemon was taken utterly by surprise when its enemy arrowed towards it. Soaring upwards, the hero saw the trap the Khornate fiend had intended for him: an empty mirror, stark against the prisons around it. A quick shift of his eyes showed him the mirror’s twin waiting on the other side.

Just before he drew parallel with the empty mirrors, the Celestant-Prime arrested his ascent. Seizing the blood-whip in his hand, he wrenched the now slackened lash. The beast’s eyes widened with shock as it was jerked downward, tumbling towards the Celestant-Prime and past the empty mirrors.

Again there came the blinding flash. When it faded, the daemon was gone, its image caught in the paired mirrors that now swung about on mismatched courses down the tiers.

The remaining bloodthirster roared and shook its horned head, disgusted that the Celestant-Prime had slipped the trap that had once more claimed its fellow vassal of Khorne. Vengefully, the fiend leapt at the champion, powering its dive with its wings. The hulking brute’s lash licked out, the blackened skulls shrieking as they bit towards the Celestant-Prime.

He didn’t allow the daemon a second blow, and brought the godhammer slamming down into his enemy’s horned visage. The skull-like face shattered under the impact, golden fire from the hammerhead surging through the fiend. Like a weed shrivelling under a hot sun, the daemon’s body wilted away, collapsing into a scabby crust that rained down across the floor.

The Celestant-Prime looked down upon his comrades. The carcass of the rat-beast lay twitching, vermin spilling from its wounds. The bodies of plague-ridden warlords and wanton sorceresses lay strewn about the tiny wedge of Stormcasts. The Thriceblessed were holding their ground, but more foes were spilling from the mirrors with each heartbeat.

Glaring at the spinning mirrors, the Celestant-Prime cursed the malignant power that directed the revolutions of the tiers, ensuring only enemies were freed from their prisons. Then his thoughts seized upon a flicker of memory, something that only now did he recognize. The cracked mirror — there had been something familiar about the way the glass had splintered. Seizing upon that sense of familiarity, he flew upwards, sweeping past rows of enchanted glass to find the one panel he sought.

He found it, speeding away among the tiers, spinning and rotating as though desperate to escape. The Celestant-Prime could see now that his memory wasn’t wrong. The crack echoed the outline of Ghal Maraz. A conviction he couldn’t shake seized the hero. The damage had been wrought by Sigmar’s hammer. How, when, he couldn’t say, but he was certain he knew why.

With an effort that taxed his mighty wings, the Celestant-Prime chased after the spinning mirror. Swinging Ghal Maraz, he brought the great hammer smashing into the cracked glass, obliterating it in a spiral of glistening fragments and glowing aethryic harmonies. A titanic scream rippled through the Maze, an elemental wail of discord. The revolutions of the mirrors slowed, the tiers sagging downwards as the prisons collapsed one after the other.

The flaw in the maze. It had been found once before, but the opportunity to exploit it had been thwarted. Now, the Celestant-Prime was here to turn that failure into success. All around him, the mirrors were breaking, freeing the captives locked within them. Now it wasn’t merely the fiends of Chaos that were at liberty, but all the Stormcasts that had been caught in the Prismatic King’s coils.

The monstrous creatures imprisoned in the maze fell upon one another, less willing to make common cause against the Stormcasts than those beasts deliberately freed by the maze’s master. The Thriceblessed weren’t wracked by such disunity. As they emerged from the aethyric discharge of the mirrors, the golden warriors formed ranks and brought battle to their hideous foes.

Ghal Maraz blazing with holy light in his mailed fist, the Celestant-Prime dived downwards to join his brothers in battle.

Locked within their prisons for so long, the Thriceblessed were disoriented as they emerged back into the mortal world. Questions of how long they had been trapped were forgotten when they saw the Celestant-Prime and the weapon he carried. The sacred aura of the godhammer swept through them, driving away all sensation but that which stemmed from their devotion to Sigmar. By the God-King they had been tasked to conquer. Now, with the aid of Ghal Maraz, they would accomplish that noble purpose.

The Celestant-Prime looked with pride at the fighters he had freed from the Maze of Reflection. Judicators armed with rune-etched skybolt bows and fearsome boltstorm crossbows. Retributors with great mauls of enchanted sigmarite. Troops of Liberators with their slashing swords and brutal hammers, their shields held proud before them. There were hundreds of the mighty warriors gazing with undisguised reverence at the hero and the weapon for which their Stormhost had been named.

‘Celestant-Prime,’ Deucius said, bowing to the champion. ‘This is Lord-Celestant Devyndus Thriceblessed.’

‘It is my honour to stand in the presence of Sigmar’s chosen,’ Devyndus said. He was a tall, powerfully built man even by the standards of the Stormcasts. The breastplate of his golden armour was fashioned into the image of a twin-tailed comet and from his shoulders there hung a cloak of woven sigmarite, its edges weighted with small hammers cast from the same material. Like the Celestant-Prime, the Lord-Celestant’s helm was ringed by a halo of metal, the spikey crown framing his head like the rays of a golden sun.

‘All who are reforged upon the Anvil of the Apotheosis are the God-King’s chosen,’ the Celestant-Prime told Devyndus. ‘It is only the bravest and most noble who can meet the rigours of such rebirth.’ As he spoke, he could see in his mind the great palace of Sigmar, and himself being remade upon the anvil of the God-King. Who and what he had been before was only a whisper, something just beyond the edge of his memory. What had been wasn’t important. It was the here and now, the ordeal before him that was. His role as rescuer of the Thriceblessed was fulfilled. Now it was left to be liberator of the realmgate and vanquisher of the Prismatic King.

Lord-Celestant Devyndus bowed. ‘We stand at your command,’ he told the hero. ‘Give us your orders and it shall be done.’

Throl stepped forwards, lean and miniscule among the mighty Stormcasts. ‘If you will forgive my impertinence, Ghal Maraz,’ he said, and picked up one of the broken shards from the mirrors. ‘The Maze of Reflection’s presence here and the fiendishness of the trap laid for you was no accident. We were led here, meant to be drawn to this place. It wasn’t mere chance that caused the captive daemons to be loosed against you.’ He held up the sliver of glass, turning it from side to side, letting the light play across its surface. ‘Everything was being directed by the Prismatic King, his terrible magic both setting the stage and moving the players.’