Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

Flash after flash, the tempest grew in magnitude with every heartbeat until the smoke-shrouded clearing reaped by the Stormcasts was bathed in blue light and filled with giant soldiers. An entire Redeemer Conclave burst into existence in the midst of the foe, reserves from the Celestial Realm that Theuderis had been waiting for the right moment to summon.

At their heart the cloud descended for a moment, a funnel of darkness and lightning touching down with a crack of thunder. Another Stormcast Eternal materialised in its heart. His armour was black, and wrought into the plates were bones that glowed with celestial energy. His helm-mask was fashioned in the shape of a skull, its eyes gleaming with a cold red light.

In one hand the Stormcast Eternal bore a massive hammer, a silver thunderbolt trailing from its head. In the other hand he bore a huge staff, not unlike the standards of the Knights-Vexillor. Its head was no icon of the Silverhands, but an open sarcophagus. The bones within were bound with shroud and corpse-tatters, its dead eye sockets filled with the same scarlet energy as the bearer.

Lord-Relictor Glavius, lodestone of the power celestial, guardian and champion of the Silverhands.

Still wreathed in the last vapours of his summoning, Glavius lifted his hammer high. The head started to glow, channelling cosmic energy from the raging storm above until it shone like a star. The Lord-Relictor thrust the hammer towards the beastmen and lightning leapt across the gap, slicing through their depleted ranks.

‘Glory to the God-King!’ Theuderis roared.

The Silverhands charged.

The Stormcast Eternals thrust as a white spear into the dark innards of the beastmen army. Wherever they struck, the creatures of Chaos fell. The freshly arrived Redeemer Conclave formed the point of the spear, already in the midst of the enemy. They drove onwards through gors and bestigors, those armed with grandhammers and grandblades at the forefront, hewing into the enemy with their double-handed weapons. After them came the Liberators with warblades and sigmarite shields, guarding the flanks and backs of their brethren in the vanguard, cutting down any that survived their assault. Lord-Relictor Glavius walked in their midst, urging them on to the greatest effort, blanketing them in the energies of the Celestial Realm.

On their heels advanced Stormcast Eternals with paired warhammers or dual-warblades, spreading out from the incision made by the assault formation, widening the breach for Theuderis and his warriors to exploit.

Hound packs, mutated wolves and centigors tried to evade the oncoming attack, peeling away from the blasted clearing into the thicker woods to the left. Samat and the other Knights-Azyros followed them, darting between the trees with inhuman speed and skill, the rest of the Angelos Conclave following swiftly behind.

Theuderis did not look back, trusting to the Judicators to finish off any threat from the rear. As he ran he pointed his sword towards the cabal of bray-shamans.

‘Pierce the heart and the body will die,’ he commanded.

Out of desperation more than bravery the beastmen were rallying against the attack. Several score of bestigors had survived the tempestuous assault of celestial energy. Snarling and bleating, they held their ground between the oncoming Stormcasts and their masters, presenting a thicket of spears, axes and shields. Several bullgors that had fled from the earlier counter-attack returned from the darkness, bloody with wounds but still formidable. A few mindless spawn and writhing mutants flopped and scampered along the periphery, hauling bloated carcasses towards the gleaming ranks of the Stormcasts, smaller creatures chittering and shrieking, leaping and gambolling through the burning trunks and felled trees.

Theuderis felt the air around him changing, the ground underfoot shifting. At first he feared another earthquake, but he soon realised that the sensation was something far more supernatural.

The bray-shamans were summoning the power of Ghur, dredging it from the deepest earth and draining it from the trees. The magical energy coiled like a trapped serpent, the corruption of Chaos bubbling through its loops, polluting and blackening where it spread. The trees surrounding the fire-ravaged clearing started to sway with violent life, their bark blistering with sores that spat hissing gobbets of acidic sap while grasping root appendages thrust from the mulch-covered earth to snare and trip.

The ground became boggier, sucking at Theuderis’ feet as he reached the bullgors. Almost losing his footing, he brought up his runeblade just in time to meet the downward arc of an axehead the size of his breastplate. The metal of the bullgor’s weapon shattered against the sigmarite of the Lord-Celestant’s. Shards of iron slashed into the enormous beastman’s flesh and pinged from the Stormcast’s armour. Grunting in surprise, the bullgor stepped back, but not far enough to elude the tip of Theuderis’ blade, which found the creature’s throat a moment later.

Dragging his boot free from the mud, drenched in the congealing blood of the brutish monster, Theuderis pressed on. His Paladins to either side laid into the bestigors, bullheads and Chaos spawn heedless of the poor ground underfoot, overcoming the worsening conditions with raw strength.

Across the furious din of battle, the Lord-Celestant heard a disturbing, ululating cry. It emanated from the bray-shamans, and echoed back in strange ways from the surrounding trees. Increasing in pitch and intensity, the call stirred up the polluted Ghurite energy frothing around the beast army, sending it soaring into the sky like a fountain. Here it met Sigmar’s Tempest, and began pushing back the celestial clouds to disperse across the forest.

Theuderis had no idea what this spell boded, but he was determined to win victory before the consequences made themselves apparent. His force had joined with the Liberators of Glavius, dividing the beast army into two almost equal parts. To the eyes of the beastmen, it must have seemed as though the Stormcasts had allowed themselves to be surrounded. Grunting and roaring orders, the gors and bray-shamans sent all of their forces into the attack.

Above the throng of hairy, deformed bodies flew tattered and patched banners, and grim standards of bone and wood. Held aloft by the fiercest warriors of the assembled warherds, these standards became the focal points of the attack, leading the beasts directly to Theuderis’ host. Every ungor, gor and bestigor threw itself at the Stormcasts, trying to break the line of ivory and blue. Though there was little guile to the attack, the feral intensity of the Chaos-born beasts threatened breakthroughs at several points. Though not classic strategists, the leaders of the beastherds could sense areas of weakness and threw themselves into the fighting with ferocious bellows. The battlefield shook with the crash of weapons and shouts from both sides, bestial howls competing with the sonorous war-chants of the Silverhands.

‘Blade of the Triumphant, Purifier formation,’ Theuderis told Attaxes, judging that the moment had arrived to deliver the killing blow.

The Knight-Heraldor’s trumpet signalled clean and clear through the cacophony of war. Hearing its command, the Silverhands acted as one. Paladins and Redeemer Conclaves moved through each other, while the Judicators guarding the rear fell back to join the rest of the army. All the while fending off the savage assault of the beastmen, the Knights Excelsior formed into a kind of wheel, with the Judicator Conclaves as the hub and the other Stormcasts spearing out like axle-blades, each two rows of warriors back to back.

The wheel started to rotate, the Stormcast Eternals keeping in perfect step whether moving forwards or backwards. Missiles and lightning bolts flared from the centre while the Stormcasts cut down everything before them. With warriors in front and behind, the beastmen were thrown into anarchy once more, unsure where to direct their attacks. Unable to simply hold position against the relentlessly advancing ‘spokes’, the beastmen were either pushed to the centre where they fell to the missile fire, caught by the swords, glaives and hammers of the Silverhands, or forced to try to break free.