Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

One day, faithless traitor, he thought to himself as he gazed upon it. One day there will be a reckoning. One day we will march upon the hell you created and we will burn it to the ground.

He was aware of the orruks surging towards him now, hollering and jeering. He took a step forwards and held his blade and hammer readily at his side. Time to roll the dice.

‘I am Lord-Celestant Thostos Bladestorm of the Celestial Vindicators,’ he said, ‘and I am here to kill your leader.’

His voice rang out across the plain, not a shout but a loud and clear statement of fact. For a moment his surety and apparent lack of concern stunned even the howling orruks. They stopped in their tracks. Then they began to laugh the deep, booming belly roars of a drunken mob. The war horde started forwards again, eager to strike down the foolish warrior who had walked into their midst.

A voice like thunder stopped them once more. It spoke a single word in a guttural tongue that Thostos did not understand, but the implication was clear. The owner of that voice had claimed this kill as his own.

‘Drekka! Drekka! Drekka!’ the horde began to chant. Thostos simply waited, every muscle primed to burst into motion. He knew the futility of fighting if these creatures decided to rush him. It seemed that he had judged the creatures correctly. These orruks might be stronger and fiercer than any of their kind he had seen before, but the same savage warrior culture united them. One amongst them, surely the largest and most brutal of their number, dominated the others. It was fear of this pack leader — fear or some other primal instinct he could never fully understand — that kept them from taking the Lord-Celestant’s head.

Pushing through the mass of whooping creatures came a true behemoth of an orruk. It towered over Thostos, eight feet of corded muscle and predatory instincts bound in a suit of iron armour so thick and heavy that it seemed truly impenetrable. Its eyes were alight with the same madness that shone in those of its fellows, but this one had a glimmer of fierce cunning behind the aggression.

‘Come in twos, eh?’ the creature asked, grinning widely. ‘Hope you’re more sport than the other one.’

Thostos raised his weapons, holding his blade forwards, the hammer up and ready to strike.

‘My name is Lord-Celestant Thostos Bladestorm,’ he said. ‘You have taken up arms against an army of Sigmar’s divine will. For that, I will take your head.’

The orruk leader’s eyes narrowed, and it flexed its muscles. A ripple of sheer power ran through its body, making the iron plate creak and squeal, and its toothy grin widened. Chipped and broken fangs jutted out from its lower jaw, and it slapped its great cleaver into one thick palm. The weapon was little more than a gigantic block of saw-edged iron, entirely lacking in ornamentation or craftsmanship. In the hands of the beast that held it, Thostos could only imagine the carnage that could be wrought.

‘Spat out bigger lumps than you, little lord,’ the beast called Drekka growled, and now there was little mirth to be found in that rumbling growl.

Thostos’ eyes drifted over the orruk, searching for a weakness. The bulwark of yellow-daubed iron that it wore was thick and heavy, though given the beast’s size it seemed unlikely to slow him down overmuch. Still, it was crudely fixed at the joints. A solid strike from a good sigmarite weapon and he could wreak some terrible damage. That was his only chance, to wear the creature down and bleed it out under the force of multiple blows.

In a burst of motion unthinkably quick for such a huge creature, Drekka charged forwards with his cleaver raised.

Thostos backed off, circling quickly to his left to force the orruk to turn and meet him. The great cleaver came down and met the crossed weapons of the Lord-Celestant. Sparks flew as brutal iron chewed into fine sigmarite, and the sheer weight of the blow buckled his knees. A heavy boot crashed into his chest, and he was thrown across the floor to land heavily in the wet earth. Mud splattered across his armour, and he felt the air rush from his lungs. There was no time to catch his breath, however. He heard the wet thump of the orruk’s boots as it thundered towards him, and rolled to his feet. Drekka was already nearly upon him. He feinted left, and as the cleaver came down he stepped inside the blow. The mighty weapon tore a great gouge out of the earth, and Thostos slammed his hammer into the creature’s side. He raised his blade to thrust between the gaps in its iron plate, but Drekka’s fist whipped out sideways and slammed into his chest.

Thostos staggered backwards, but caught himself before he lost his footing. The orruk leader chuckled as he paced like a hunting beast, a wide smile splitting his scarred face.

‘Almost got me there, little ’un,’ he chuckled. ‘Can’t have that.’

‘We shall see,’ said Thostos.

The place was a chamber of horrors. Atrin pushed further into the mortuary tunnels, and was met with new nightmares at every corner. Hideous, deformed monsters, their flesh warped and twisted, screamed at him from the glass jars that contained them. Books bound in decaying flesh whispered obscene promises at him as he passed. In one room he found a font filled with softly simmering blood. Within, for just a moment, he thought he saw a man’s screaming face, before it was dragged beneath the surface. Nauseated and disgusted, he pushed on.

The next hallway ended in a high, arched chamber, and it was here that he found Callan. The Retributor was held upright in the centre of the room by chains that stretched from all four corners. His melted armour exposed raw flesh beneath, and blood dripped from open wounds to gather in a trough below. Books were scattered about the floor around the warrior’s tormented figure, and the sorcerer’s insane scrawling covered the walls. More great glass jars full of pale, cloudy liquid were placed around the room, and Atrin could see horrors drifting and writhing within their murky depths.

‘Sigmar’s wrath is coming, for you and all your degenerate kind,’ he shouted into the echoing halls. ‘Come face me, and I will make your end a quick one.’

‘As you wish,’ came a chortling voice from the shadows. ‘For my part I make no such promise.’

As he scanned the room to find a hint of the man, Atrin could hear the sound of whispered chanting, and could feel the room grow cold. A pale pink glow surrounded him. Gibbering, disembodied mouths appeared in the air around him, sinking discoloured fangs into his armour. Sigmarite twisted and tore even as the sound of cackling laughter filled his ears. He swiped at the maws with his gladius, and felt a burst of fluid as several came apart with a splatter of crimson gore. More appeared in their stead, and he growled as one attached itself to his wrist, crunching the metal of his gauntlet so that it bit painfully into his hand. How he hated fighting magic users. There was no honour in this mummery, no dignity in it at all. Again he scanned the room for a sign of Xos’Phet, but he could see nothing.

Atrin cut another sniggering maw from the sky, and turned to repeat the manoeuvre when a fist made of glowing blue energy rushed across the room and struck him full in the chest with astonishing force. He staggered backwards to crash against a stone coffer, coughing and gasping for breath.

‘All your strength, all that training,’ came a high-pitched voice that echoed around the chamber. ‘And you are undone by the simplest of magic. You people understand only the hammer and the iron fist, and refuse to accept your simple insignificance next to the power of the arcane. Lord Varash was the same, curse his bones. His only ambition was that which I fed to him, like scraps to a hungry dog.’