Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

Strengthened by the faith of his comrades, the Celestant-Prime took a step towards the diamond throne. ‘I’m not here as emissary,’ he snarled at the daemon. ‘I’m here as executioner. I’m here to answer the cries of the innocent you have enslaved and killed. I’m here to avenge the kingdoms and empires you have annihilated. I’m here to defend the worlds you would despoil with your sorcery.’ He held Ghal Maraz overhead, letting its holy presence blaze forth in a nimbus of sacred fire. ‘Tell me where you have hidden the Pillar of Whispers and earn the mercy of swift destruction.’

The Lord of Change uttered a cackle of withering mirth. ‘I whispered in the ears of priests and emperors in the Age of Myth. I set nations aflame in the Age of Chaos. What are you, Ghal Maraz? A mortal substituting for a god? A nameless vagabond who calls himself by the trinket he carries? Who are you to contend with me?’

The Celestant-Prime felt the bite of the daemon’s words. He felt too the strength of his own faith. His eyes burned behind the mask of his helm. ‘It isn’t who I am that matters — it is what I am!’ He brought Ghal Maraz slamming into the floor, sending a shockwave through the panes that cracked and splintered the innumerable atrocities of the Prismatic King’s glass legions. ‘I am your doom, Soulshriver.’

The daemon’s enraged howl shrieked across the hall. Translucent membranes slid across the fiend’s eyes as it brought its talons together. A surge of crackling magic swept down the gallery, dragging the cracked slivers of the floor into its seething storm. The gale rushed towards the Celestant-Prime and the Thriceblessed, an arcane tornado of boiling sorcery and razored glass.

The Celestant-Prime held his ground, brandishing the godhammer. In a shriek of elemental violence, the dark magic of the Prismatic King crashed into the faith and devotion of Ghal Maraz. The dark storm frayed, its grisly energies blown apart in splatters of roiling corruption that sizzled against the crystal columns and gem-encrusted ceiling. The slivers of glass dropped back to the floor in a cascade of broken fragments.

‘The chosen of Sigmar! The Celestant-Prime!’ Deucius raised his voice in a roar of adoration. The cry was taken up by the other Thriceblessed. Their shame at failing to overcome the trickery of Chaos and at their imprisonment in the Maze of Reflection was now fanned into a surge of judgemental wrath. Like an avalanche, they charged across the hall to confront the daemon who had worked its deceit upon them.

The Prismatic King glared contemptuously at the army of Stormcasts. With a gesture of its ensorcelled talons, the arrows of lightning loosed upon it by the Judicators dissipated into sparks of harmless light. A snap of its mighty pinions sent a gale that staggered the hulking Retributors. A ghastly squawk that was part scream and part incantation bubbled from the daemon’s beak and from the smouldering depths of its diamond throne shapes oozed into being, gaining in size and solidity until they stood within the hall — a mismatched horde of barbaric warriors and snarling beastmen. The Lord of Change extended its claw and the mongrel army leapt to the attack.

Sweeping the Cometstrike Sceptre overhead, the Celestant-Prime once more drew on the relic’s divine power. The ribbon of holy energy swept outward, wrenching a fiery ball from the heavens, flinging the conjured flame full into the swarming foe. Scores of Chaos warriors and beastmen were immolated by the cosmic fury of the comet, their mangled bodies flung across the hall, crashing into the stunned ranks of the Prismatic King’s vassals. Before the slaves of darkness could recover from their shock, the Stormcasts were charging towards them.

The Celestant-Prime led the advance. Faith and conviction were anathema to all things of Chaos, but it would need more than the valour of men to overcome a fiend as ancient and steeped in evil as the Prismatic King. Only a weapon as mighty and sacred as Ghal Maraz could vanquish the daemon.

The Judicators unleashed their skybolts across the hall. The Prismatic King didn’t squander any of its sorcery to protect its slaves, however. Dozens of mortal warriors fell, their blackened mail pierced by the crackling missiles. The Retributors took position before the Judicators, defending the archers against the rush of snarling gors eager for their blood. With precision honed over numberless battles, they swung their massive mauls in a brutal arc, breaking bones and crushing horned skulls. Soon the ground before them was littered with the battered bodies of dead and dying beastkin.

As the Prismatic King’s warriors struck the ring of Retributors, the Liberators pushed their way to the vanguard. With swords and hammers, the Thriceblessed wrought vengeful havoc against the minions of Chaos.

The Celestant-Prime cast down rank after rank of barbarous foes. Each strike from Ghal Maraz sent a thunderous clamour echoing through the hall. With one swing he obliterated a clutch of barbaric reavers. Another blow reduced a pack of horned gors into a heap of bloodied flesh and shattered bone. A hulking, bull-headed minotaur lunged for him, trampling the Thriceblessed who strayed into its path. A glancing blow of the godhammer tore the head from the beast’s powerful body and sent it crashing among the monstrous throng still emerging from the diamond throne.

Any mortal would have known despair as he contemplated the innumerable foes the Prismatic King had already conjured from the depths of its throne. To see still more swarming forth would have broken them. But the Stormcasts had transcended such limits. They had been recast by the God-King, transformed into instruments of Sigmar’s holy retribution. For them, there was no fear in battle, no such thing as unopposable odds. While they lived, they fought and while they fought they did so knowing that the glory of Sigmar shone within each of them.

None embodied this stalwart conviction more than the Celestant-Prime. Here was the fire in which he would be tested, the flame in which he would be proved. Yet as he would have pressed forwards, as he would have battered his way through the hordes of Chaos, a tiny warning made him hesitate. Had the Prismatic King, master of deceit and illusion, limited itself to such crude and obvious measures to protect its domain?

The Celestant-Prime looked beyond the crush of battle and the fires of his own righteous thirst for justice. Despite the ferocity of the fight, none of the Stormcasts had fallen. The chaotic horde was only trying to delay the warriors of Sigmar. After the Maze of Reflection, he could guess their hideous purpose.

Slain, the Stormcasts would dissipate, returning to the Anvil of the Apotheosis to be reforged. Trapped within the mirrors of the Prismatic King, however, they would be lost to the God-King. That was the peril which now threatened the Thriceblessed. The Prismatic King was going to work some feat of sorcery to achieve the same foul enchantment as the maze.

‘Devyndus!’ the Celestant-Prime’s voice thundered above the carnage. ‘The daemon’s slaves are trying to delay us, to give their master time to trap us all.’

The Lord-Celestant bellowed commands to the Thriceblessed near him, who in turn passed the orders down the line. The Judicators loosed a concentrated barrage of lightning-arrows into the midst of the vicious horde, focussing their shafts along a narrow front. Into this momentary gap surged a phalanx of Liberators, their shields locked together to form a wall of sigmarite that would stem the tide of warriors sweeping around them. The Celestant-Prime rushed through the narrow path the Liberators had created for him, Lord-Celestant Devyndus dispatching Deucius to protect the champion’s flank. In their wake, the wizard Throl scrambled towards the forefront of the battle.