Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

‘You seem troubled, my friend,’ Eldroc said.

‘It is nothing, Lord-Castellant. Merely concern that we found battle so soon. I had hoped to arrive at our destination without issue.’

‘How fine that would be,’ Eldroc chuckled. ‘In these times that would be a rare blessing, in any corner of the realms.’

He rested his halberd on his shoulder and leaned upon the haft. They were silent a moment, listening to the tramp of boots and the howling of the wind as it whipped its way through the mountain pass.

‘He can be difficult, I know,’ the Lord-Castellant said, quietly.

Mykos said nothing. It was clear that Eldroc was choosing his words carefully, and he gave the man time to gather his thoughts. It was no easy thing for a Stormcast to question a fellow warrior, let alone his leader. Absolute loyalty and brotherhood was as much a part of them as their armour, as their weapons and their fearlessness.

‘I have spoken to many of our reforged brothers,’ Eldroc sighed, ‘and the change is more marked in Thostos than in any of them. He used to be such a thoughtful man. I think that was why he was chosen to lead. We are a wrathful host, and we need such men to temper us.’

Eldroc turned to Mykos. There was a pleading edge to his voice, and Mykos realised that the Lord-Castellant had likely never spoken to another soul regarding his concerns.

‘Give him time, my lord,’ Eldroc said.

Prosecutor-Prime Evios Goldfeather enjoyed the spiteful power of the winds of the Roaring Plains as they buffeted him mercilessly. It was pleasant enough to glide in the tranquil air of the Singing Gardens, or even over the celestial valleys of Erianos, but if there was one thing Goldfeather valued, it was a challenge. The wind here had no sense to it; a zephyr would drift west, allowing him to glide on its gentle arc, then a wall of force would slam him back the other direction, blasting him so hard that he dropped several yards, and spinning him so fast that he could barely control his descent.

At first it was unsettling, but he quickly found himself relishing the unforgiving nature of the place. There was a pattern to be found in the midst of the madness. He caught a rising gust and let it lift him, felt it sway and weaken, and sought a westerly gale that filled his radiant wings with air, letting it take him on a wide arc over the churning grass of the Roaring Plains. His fellow Prosecutors followed in his wake, though he noted with no surprise, and no small amount of satisfaction, that they were finding the turbulent winds far trickier to deal with. Galeth and Harion had already been blown off course, despite the power of their Azyrite wings. He would have to speak to them later; he demanded a certain level of excellence from his men, after all.

He returned his gaze to the plains. It was an astonishing sight, the Prosecutor-Prime had to concede. The great grass seas stretched for miles in every direction, punctuated by jagged, twisting spears of rock and wind-scoured mesa clusters that broke through the earth’s surface, clutching at the sky. In all that space one might expect a measure of stillness, but that was not the case; everywhere Goldfeather looked, there was motion. Around the base of the rocky protrusions the grass grew longer, grasping at the escaping formations, wrapping around them in choking vine clusters. The wind shifted and pulled at these vines, tightening them like a hangman’s noose. As the shifting clouds passed overhead and darkened the plain for a moment, Goldfeather thought he saw one great claw of rock lurch, dragged down towards the earth by a thick belt of thorns that encircled it. Then sunlight speared though the clouds once more and it was still. Just a trick of the light, he supposed.

He was distracted by a low, rumbling noise that built into a roar. In the distance, the earth itself split. Dirt was kicked up as a great gouge tore across the plain, as if something monstrous was attempting to wrench itself free. No sooner had the earth ceased its writhing movement than a second rent appeared, following the path of the first. There was a tremor, signified by a series of great cracks that rippled across the ground, and then an uneasy quiet.

Soaring higher, Goldfeather saw more terrible wonders. A carpet of flesh roiled across the plain far to the Stormcasts’ left, a shifting mass of stampeding beasts so thickly packed together that he could not see the ground beneath them. They were flat-headed, quadruped grazing beasts, with mighty horns that wrapped backwards around their skulls. There were thousands… hundreds of thousands of them.

The Prosecutor-Prime dropped closer and saw another flock of creatures, scaled and lizard-like, but with brightly coloured feathers across their wings and hindquarters. Each was bigger than a man, almost the same size as a Stormcast, and as Evios watched they rolled and dived into the stampede, nipping at the flanks of the beasts and trying to drive them into one another. As he watched, one of the larger avians succeeded in tripping an unfortunate creature; there was a horrific avalanche of hooves and screaming flesh, and a great chunk of the onrushing tide collapsed in on itself. Nothing could survive such carnage and Evios watched, impressed despite himself at the winged creatures’ ingenuity, as a mountain of crushed beasts piled up, ground to pieces under the sheer weight of the onrushing mass. They would eat well once the stampede had passed on.

One of the avian creatures noticed his presence and began to shriek, and Goldfeather decided it was time to move on. He signalled his retinue, and as one they peeled away from the massacre.

He dropped again and found another gust of wind, and let it sweep him back to the south, towards the Stormcast position. The Prosecutor-Prime had almost satisfied himself that he had a clear reading on the region when he caught something out of the corner of his eye. Heading in a lateral direction towards the foothills that the Stormcasts were heading to, he saw a number of specks. He signalled his men to follow and soared towards the movement.

As he swept closer, he saw that a large mob of creatures was pursuing a smaller, scattered band across the plain. The pursuers numbered a couple of hundred, perhaps, and their size, lumbering gait and bulky, crudely grafted armour marked them out as orruks.

Prosecutor Omeris finally caught up with him. ‘They head towards our brothers,’ he said, straining to be heard above the howl of the wind. ‘We should head back to inform the Lord-Celestants.’

‘Orruks,’ spat Goldfeather. ‘Low-minded filth, the lot of them.’

‘They almost have their prey,’ said Omeris.

‘Hardly surprising,’ Goldfeather replied. ‘The cursed brutes can run for hours when their blood is up.’

His gaze fell upon the fleeing band. They were scrawny and battered, and they wore ragged scraps of leather not much more refined than that of the primitive savages chasing them, but there was no mistaking it.

They were human.

The Stormcasts wound their way through the bluffs, alert at every howl, every creak of earth. Eldroc marched at the head of the column, a few paces behind Thostos. He watched his lord stride onwards, heedless of the noises around them. Eldroc, and all of his brothers in the Celestial Vindicators, had seen their families and friends slaughtered by the vile hordes of Chaos. As the blades finally came for them too, they had bellowed their defiance to the skies, and prayed to mighty Sigmar for the chance to wreak their vengeance upon the hated minions of the Dark Gods. This oath had been offered willingly, and any price had been a price worth paying.

And yet, looking at what had become of his Lord-Celestant, Eldroc was filled with doubt. The man was hollow, an unfeeling shell filled with nothing but an insatiable need to exact his vengeance. Gone was the thoughtful, righteous man that Eldroc had battled and trained with for so many years leading up to the great venture into the realms. They had talked together once, sharing dreams of a new era of hope and glory for the scions of Sigmar, both knowing that they would never get to experience that peace for themselves. They had accepted that truth gladly, but it was one thing to welcome an inevitable, honourable death, and another to die eternally, each fresh Reforging bringing a symphony of agonies, further draining and weakening the soul.