Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

Skullbrand slew this one too, slamming a hobnailed boot on the Prosecutor’s chest to hold him down before an axe in the warrior’s emotionless mask ended his suffering.

Theodrus and his paladins had smashed a path clear, and Ionus burst through the enemy ranks and charged.

As Skullbrand met the eye of the Lord-Relictor, the bloodsecrator grinned. He knew it was too late for anyone to stop him.

With a triumphant roar, he rammed the icon of Khorne into the blood-soaked earth.

The stench of foetid blood rose high in the gorge, tainting the air. A storm of wrath burst from the icon, throwing Ionus off his feet.

A knot of paladins rushed to their Lord-Relictor, as a horde of Khornate bloodreavers spilled into the gap between the bloodsecrator and his foes.

Ionus cursed as he got to his feet.

‘Close ranks,’ he snarled, and could only glare at the hulking blood-priest.

You and I shall meet soon, he promised.

For now, the battle continued. The Stormcasts were in the ascendancy but it was far from over.

The crimson rain began again, driving the Bloodbound into fits of apoplexy. Soon the paladins were hard-pressed again, and the baleful roar of distant daemons in a realm of carnage seemed close and at hand.

The unsettling taint of Khorne’s own domain and the frenzy it evoked in his followers were merely opening acts to what followed…

It began as thunder, a deep rumble that came through the earth, rather than the sky.

A cloud of dust arose, barely visible in the darkness… Then an army resolved, roving along the night-black horizon. Moonlight glinted off their armoured barding.

‘Cavalry?’ growled Theodrus, in a brief moment’s respite.

Around him, the two forces clashed fiercely.

‘No mortal kind,’ rasped Ionus. ‘Those aren’t horses, nor are their riders knights. At least, not of flesh and blood. I—’ he began, before violently convulsing. At first, he thought it might be the effects of the icon, trying to turn his mind to reckless hate. But as the chill swept through his marrow, turning his bones to ice, he knew it was something else.

Something old, and from the past. From before, when he had been someone else.

The brass tower faded, becoming as incorporeal as smoke. The faces of his fellow Stormcasts froze in dark ice.

‘No, not now. Not this!’

Even as his mind was wrenched away, Ionus could hear the oncoming stampede of the bloodcrushers until even that bled away to sepulchral silence.

He opened his eyes, not realising he had closed them, and found he was standing in a long hall of cold, grey stone. Dust motes trickled from the ceiling in an endless, sad rain.

Darkness, abject and all pervasive, blinded Ionus to much of his surroundings. He imagined mausoleums, the slow creak of rotting wood, bones and earth as chill as winter frost.

He knew this place, for he had been here before in another life. The Deep Barrows — one of the many underworlds of Shyish, the Realm of Death.

‘Why am I here?’ he asked of the dark.

His own voice echoed back like a taunt.

‘Answer me!’

A tithe is owed. A tithe shall be given.

The same words returned, haunting and ageless as before.

A soul for a soul.

A malign intelligence regarded Ionus from the shadows, though he could scarcely perceive it. The only thing he could discern was a vague silhouette, and two piercing orbs of baleful green. Neither leavened the dark. Instead, they drank in the light.

You defied me once before, Eonid ven Denst, uttered the voice. It was the sound of depthless winter, of ancient wisdom beyond comprehension. It was entropy and the slow return to order. It was death incarnate.

Ionus’s reply carried some steel. ‘It has been a long time since I was known as Eonid ven Denst.’

A dry rasp like the whispering of thousands of corpses issued from the darkness.

Laughter, Ionus realised. He was being mocked.

A tithe is owed. A tithe shall be given, the voice repeated, though the shadow of its owner remained unmoving.

A soul for a soul.

Eldritch light flared into being, sculpted into the resemblance of a woman.

The shadow moved, leaning forward on its throne as Ionus cried out and reached for his wife. His sigmarite-clad fingers began to erode and rust before he could touch her, the grace Sigmar had given him undone in an instant.

It took just moments to reduce Ionus Cryptborn, Lord-Relictor and Stormcast Eternal to Eonid ven Denst, Amethyst Prince.

The simulacrum of ven Denst’s wife writhed in agony, her mouth open in a silent scream that he could only hear in his memories.

‘Please!’ begged ven Denst, his pale face awash with tears. He could feel her now, but as his skin gently brushed against hers she began to wither and decay. ‘Please…’ His voice, once so strong and formidable, became a whimper. ‘Please…’

Ven Denst sank to his knees, with only a pile of ashen remains in his grasp.

He looked up to face his tormenter. Only darkness looked back, but it was well beyond pity or compassion.

‘You promised me that you would keep her. That we would be reunited in death.’

With eternal life comes eternal pain. You should not have defied me. I remember everything. I remember the Days of Shattered Bone.

Ven Denst let the ash fall and rose to stand before his accuser. He felt his former strength returning. A gauntleted fist, not the hand of an Amethyst Prince, clutched his relic-hammer. He was Ionus Cryptborn again.

A last thought struck Ionus, of Vandus on his knees, besieged by Chaos, and a dark champion looming over him with a ready axe. It was the prophecy as Vandus had described it.

A tithe is owed. A tithe shall be given.

A soul for a soul.

‘Release me,’ uttered Cryptborn, then bellowed when no answer came. ‘Release me!’

He slammed down his reliquary staff and a great flash of light blinded him.

As it faded, he heard voices and smelled blood, the reek of hot metal and sulphur.

A retinue of paladins surrounded Ionus, fending off a horde of attackers. Theodrus led them, an unyielding bulwark of sigmarite against an ocean of fury.

‘Lord-Relictor…’ His mask could not hide the concern in his voice.

Ionus raised a hand to show he was all right. ‘Where are the daemons?’ he asked, still groggy but rising to his feet.

Theodrus did not need to answer, as the thunderous charge of the bloodcrushers hit.

A spearthrust of daemonic cavalry burst right into the heart of the Stormcasts’ ranks. Ionus could only watch as his battle formation was breached in several places at once. The beasts the daemons rode were truly monstrous. Warriors were crushed under iron hooves, gored by horns or torn apart with savage teeth.

Lightning cracks tore apart the darkness.

‘Hold them!’ roared Ionus as he felt the line roll and turn as men were slain. ‘Reform as one!’

A Retributor flailed, spitted. A knot of his comrades rushed in and smashed the steed apart with their hammers, but it was hard going. As well as proving incredibly strong, the daemonic beasts were nearly impermeable to all but the most determined of attacks.

After being so close to victory, now the Stormcast Eternals were firmly on the back foot and assailed from all sides.

As their numbers diminished, the Prosecutors could only harry the edges of the enemy’s ranks. Any that came too close to the bloodcrushers were cut down, Ionus ordered them back so as not to sell their lives cheaply.

The hammer formation of the paladins had become a circle, with all its warriors facing outwards and fighting almost innumerable foes. It was the task for which Sigmar had made them, but Ionus knew his chamber’s martial strength was finite. He began to see the wisdom of striking for the Gate of Wrath and denying Chaos its endless hosts.