Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

Great menhirs, carved into the likeness of daemon kings, marked the threshold of Khul’s domain. The stone obelisks were huge and towered above the crimson mist. Their bestial features were contorted in snarls of rage and unfettered wrath. A killing urge bled off them, like sweat off a mortal man, and they clenched whips, maces and axes in their clawed fists.

‘Bloodthirsters…’ uttered Neros, recognising the image of the foul greater daemons wrought into the stone.

If Khul’s domain was protected by such beasts then the task before the Stormcast Eternals was great indeed. Even with the other Stormhosts, like the Anvils of the Heldenhammer and the Lions of the Sigmar, Bloodthirsters would pose a significant threat.

It did little to sour Jactos’s ebullient mood.

‘Have heart, brothers,’ he said, gesturing with his runeblade to the lair that lay beyond the menhirs. ‘Our quarry is near.’

Neros hefted his halberd as he thrust the light of his warding lantern forth.

‘It is not all that is near, my lord.’

The Bloodbound hordes came swiftly from the mist. They always did, ubiquitous as bones in this parched land. Their war cries split the air — not an ambush this time, but a pitched battle.

‘It seems Khul has not left his borders unprotected after all,’ said Jactos as he drew his hammer.

Glory beckoned. He had but to dispatch these wretches first.

‘Stormcasts!’ he cried. ‘To arms!’

Elsewhere, others fought with equal fervour and conviction.

Vandus and his Warrior Chamber would not be outdone by the Goldenmanes.

A ragged throng of warriors charged at them across the ash plain, kicking up clods of burning dust and cinder.

The Hammerhands met them in serried ranks, Liberators to the fore with shields upraised and, behind them, the Judicators. Malactus held his arm aloft to halt his retinue.

Every warrior armed with a skybolt bow turned it heavenward as one.

‘Release!’

Malactus’s voice carried far. It even reached the blood-soaked tribesmen barrelling across the plain. Some faltered as they heard it, wondering what it portended. The answer came swiftly on the lightning shafts of hundreds of skybolt arrows.

Evil men fell in their droves, scythed down by the deadly accuracy of the Judicators. Driven by their bloodlust and momentum, bloodreavers tripped and scrambled as they struck falling bodies. Heavily armoured blood warriors crumpled with arrows in their gullets or eye sockets. The Bloodbound battle line, such as it was, fragmented and scattered. The Liberators did not hesitate, and swept into them with their shields, battering warriors aside or crushing them underfoot. Any who had fight left in them were swiftly dealt with by hammer and blade.

The massacre was quick, but not painless. Not for the Bloodbound.

Vandus had been at the core of the fighting, letting Calanax have his rein as he stood with his retinues. It had felt good to be an integral part of the brotherhood.

In spite of this, Vandus’s mood soured when he saw how far Jactos had gone. The Lord-Celestant himself was somewhere amidst the distant scrum that Vandus now saw.

Decanthos joined him at the front. ‘They’re closing on the Red Pyramid.’

Vandus nodded, and the scowl he wore behind his mask was obvious from his voice.

‘Swifter than us. At this pace, our chambers will not breach the threshold to Khul’s domain at the same time.’

The massive Chaos idols that led to where Khul had made his lair appeared to mock them. Each depicted a different greater daemon of Khorne, a dread pantheon of bloodthirsters. Vandus saw one with ragged wings clutching a pair of axes. Another had a whip coiled around its wrist. A third hefted a double-bladed axe.

Looming above all was the Red Pyramid and, in front of that, the Gate of Wrath itself. An archway not unlike the one they had seized on the Igneous Delta, except this one was bent to darkness, a portal to the Realm of Chaos. With it under their control, Khul’s warhorde would be unstoppable.

‘We should make haste,’ said Decanthos, ‘and hope these fell creatures are not also in service to Korghos Khul.’

Banners and totems swayed on the horizon as more Bloodbound hordes clamoured for war. The lands around the Brimstone Peninsula were choked with them.

Vandus bellowed for his dracoth and Calanax came running.

As he mounted the saddle, he turned to the Liberator-Prime.

‘The Gate of Azyr was a mere prelude compared to this, Decanthos.’ Seeing others had gathered and were listening, Vandus raised his voice to address them all. ‘We stand at the threshold of hell. Know this is why we were forged. Here is our chance to turn back the tide of evil that has swept across these lands and enslaved them. I shall not falter as I face Chaos, nor will I blink before the daemon. I will stand and declare I am Stormcast Eternal, chosen of Sigmar! Will you declare the same?’

The affirmation from his warriors was deafening. It drowned out the war cries of the tribesmen in the distance, and stunned them into silence.

‘Azyr!’ bellowed Vandus.

‘Azyr!’ came the thunderous reply.

‘Bring. Them. Death!’

The tide was endless.

Scores of bloodreavers, daemons and monsters died beneath sigmarite hammers, and yet still they came, undaunted, unceasing.

Jactos and his warriors were deep into Khul’s lair now, far beyond the snarling faces of its stone guardians. Vandus had covered much ground, but it would be the Goldenmanes and not the Hammerhands who would claim this victory for Sigmar.

Barely a hundred of his brave Stormcasts remained, as the azure flashes that followed every death and return to Azyr became all too common.

He had lost sight of Neros, cut off during the last push, though he thought he still could hear the strident defiance of his Lord-Castellant. Jactos’s retainers still cleaved to him, though, his paladins and a clutch of battered Liberators. None faltered, and they fought without fear, plumbing depths of endurance that would have killed lesser men.

Unlike the servants of Khorne, though, the Stormcasts’ ranks were not without limit. Hard as it was for him to admit, Jactos knew they were waning.

Assailed on all sides by lumbering khorgoraths, hell-spawned slaughterbrutes and swathes of mortal Bloodbound, the Goldenmanes were beleaguered when Jactos at last reached the foot of the Red Pyramid.

His intent had been to make for the Gate of Wrath, to confront and defeat Khul on its very steps and thus earn eternal glory for Sigmar. But instead, he had been driven here. And though he was but a few more strides from the gate, his path was severely impeded by enemies. Not until Jactos saw who descended from the Red Pyramid did he understand why he had been driven there.

A deep thrust with his runeblade disembowelled a khorgorath and it fell to the hot earth, blood steaming on the foetid air.

‘To me, Liberators!’ shouted Jactos to his men. ‘To me, Retributors!’

No rallying note sounded from his heraldor this time. Ulius Stormcry had fallen, his voice now silent.

Jactos fought on as if he had heard the clarion call anyway, and came face to face with the one he guessed was the warlord Korghos Khul.

A brute, clad in blood-red armour and with a skull-helm masking the upper half of his face, strode down the Red Pyramid. Bone crunched beneath his heavy tread, skulls splitting and spilling their teeth. Khul appeared not to notice. As his gaze fell upon the Lord-Celestant, his eyes narrowed.

A creature padded around the feet of the warlord, a monstrous red-skinned hound with a brass collar and a flanged crest of skin under its gullet. As Khul gripped the back of its neck, the hound snarled in hatred for the Stormcasts.