Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

He realised less than a score of heartbeats had passed since he had been hurled down to Ursungorod by the power of Sigmar, yet three dozen enemies already lay dead behind him. The kin-eaters’ mistress looked on with an expression of joy, not fear, and he stared into her dark eyes and saw only the madness of Chaos. In her the spirit of Khorne the Blood God was strong. Arkas could smell the taint on her as strongly as the metallic scent of blood leaking from his slain foes.

Drawing a wickedly serrated tulwar, the Gore Maiden leapt to counter-attack, hurdling the headless corpse of one of her followers as he fell away from Arkas’ swinging blade. She was as fast as his Stormcast companions, the tip of her sword cutting across the curve of a moulded pectoral. The blade appeared to steam with the power of Khorne, leaving a molten welt on the breast of Arkas’ armour.

Stunned for a moment, he stepped back, raising his hammer to ward away the next slashing attack. The sigmarite rang cleanly at the impact of the Gore Maiden’s tulwar, sparks of power erupting from its head. Another blow sped towards his arm and Arkas turned quickly, allowing it to fall just past his shoulder.

He kicked, his armoured boot connecting with the midriff of the Khornate champion, breaking ribs and throwing her a dozen strides across the snow. She rolled through a flurry of white, coming to her feet with a grimace just in time to block Arkas’ descending blade with her own.

‘Your bloody master cannot aid you against the righteousness of Sigmar,’ Arkas spat, knocking aside the Gore Maiden’s weapon with the haft of his hammer.

The Stormcast Eternal felt blows clanging against his back and helm, but all of his attention was directed on the Gore Maiden. He pressed his advantage, swinging his hammer towards her head. As she jumped aside, the tip of his blade met her neck, parting flesh and spine without pause.

Seeing their chief decapitated robbed the kin-eaters of their remaining courage. The cannibals fled as he turned, some abandoning their weapons to speed their flight down the mountainside. They dashed left and right, splitting up, too many for Arkas to chase them all down.

The Stormcast Eternal lifted his hammer above his head, pointing to the skies where the Tempest of Sigmar still churned in cerulean glory.

‘To me, warriors of Sigmaron! Celestial Vindicators, our moment is upon us! Heed the call of your Lord-Celestant, my Warbeasts!’

There was a little likeness of a rat in the monster’s features, but it walked five times the height of the Chaos vermin, its head surrounded by a mane of curling, twisted horns. Its tail, longer than the beast was tall, was like a barbed whip tipped with metallic blades. Overlapping plates of serrated oil-black armour covered a ragged tunic of dun and pink-grey flesh, and a faceted helm of the same unnatural metal protected its skull and cheeks. A thick belt of cracked hide girded its waist and a huge book was bound there by a corroded chain, a smog-like cloud slipping from the fluttering pages.

In taloned hands it gripped a spear, the head splitting into four curved tines that sparked with magical energy. The air thrashed around the monster and the ground blistered under its tread, as if its simple presence offended the earth and sky.

‘Verminlord! Daemon of the Horned One!’

Arka heard the gasp and glanced over his shoulder in time to see Radomira collapsing. Blood ran from her eyes and ears, and her attendants looked on helplessly, ashen-faced, quivering with fear.

The verminlord thrust its spear towards the ramparts and a bolt of green energy struck the stones, sending up jagged chunks and charred corpses. The ratkin flowed forwards, their screeches deafening. Another bolt of magic slashed through the defenders to Arka’s left, turning armour to rusted flakes and the flesh within to rotten meat.

Arka saw again the face of his mother, withered before its time, claw-like hands grasping at the sweat-soaked bedding. Coughing wracked her body. In the horror of that moment, Arka knew that the creature stalking towards the gates was the same that had unleashed the pestilence on Ursungorod and ripped his mother’s life away.

He levelled his axe at the creature in silent challenge. It looked up at him with glowing green eyes and bared sharp fangs in what might have been a smile.

A rolling blast of thunder drew Arka’s gaze up for a moment. Blue lightning crawled across the bottom of the storm clouds, like nothing he had seen before. The stones beneath his booted feet shivered as the verminlord unleashed a blast of power at the gates, turning wood to mouldering splinters.

The lightning lanced down, hitting Arka’s upraised axe, earthing through his arm and down his spine.

He thought himself dead in that instant, but the feeling of energy that ran through him grew rather than weakening. He felt himself lifted, ascending towards the heavens. His body dissolved into energy, a bolt of power erupting upwards.

With a last conscious thought, he saw the ratkin swarming over the walls of Kurzengor and knew he had failed his people.

From the head of Arkas’ hammer, a beam of blue light leapt up to the skies, its signal carrying beyond the Mortal Realms to Sigmaron. An instant later, a crackle of storm energy lanced down. The two crashed together and a tempest of lightning bolts flared, raining down around the Stormcast. Where each blast touched the ground, the snow melted and the earth beneath charred. Each blinding flash left behind another giant warrior clad in turquoise armour, until a company of the greatest warriors stood before him.

Two lightning strikes flanked Arkas to the left and right, each just a few paces from him. On his left appeared a warrior bearing aloft a golden standard in the shape of crossed hammers, wreathed in parchments adorned with the blessings of Sigmar in Azyrite script.

‘Dolmetis, my Knight-Vexillor, raise the standard and proclaim these lands the domains of Sigmar, God-King!’

On the right his Knight-Heraldor materialised, bearing a long clarion from which hung a pennant in the colours of Arkas’ Exemplar Chamber.

‘Doridun, sound forth the challenge so that all will know that Sigmar’s rule has returned to Ursungorod!’

The Knight-Heraldor lifted the instrument and let forth a single peal, its note matched by a thunderous crash from the heavens that echoed across the mountain valley. As the last reverberations died away, Dolmetis approached his Lord-Celestant, casting glances at the mutilated remains of the kin-eaters that lay scattered across the blood-stained snow.

‘I thought we were to attack as a chamber, Lord Arkas?’

The Lord-Celestant laughed and pointed to the fleeing Chaos war party.

‘I left some for you! Doridun, signal the pursuit. Leave none alive!’

‘Such a sight to stir the blood,’ said Theuderis Silverhand, speaking as much to himself as to his steed. He patted the scaled neck of his dracoth, Tyrathrax.

The sight to which he referred was a display of unparalleled martial glory. Retinue after retinue of the Silverhands Warrior Chamber marched forth from the realmgate. The portal had been opened on the Plateau of Omens in the Celestial Realm, and led to the Capricious Wilds, an untamed region within the Realm of Beasts. In a few strides, Sigmar’s army had crossed the cosmic gulf. The portal itself was formed of two jutting pilasters of gleaming rock, their surfaces etched with runic devices each as tall as a man. They rose from opposite sides of a canyon, which was scored like an axe wound across the mountains. Arcs of energy blazed between them and flared into the dark sky, lighting the white armour of Theuderis’ host.