Chris Wright - Age of Sigmar - Omnibus

‘Grizzlemaw can smell fear,’ said the warlord, casually stepping off the pyramid and standing before Jactos. His gauntleted fist was wrapped around a double-bladed axe that exuded deathly potency. Khul sneered. ‘You already look defeated.’

Undaunted, Jactos levelled his runeblade at the warlord.

‘It shall be your head, not my Lord Hammerhand’s, that adorns your Red Pyramid,’ he declared. ‘Then I will see it sundered into nought but bone and ash!’

‘Ah…’ remarked Khul, ‘so you have come to save Vendell Blackfist from my blade. Brave, but misguided. You must realise, whelp,’ he said, hefting his axe in both hands as he advanced, ‘that prophecies are seldom wholly accurate.’

As if sensing what was about to take place, the retainers of both champions stepped back and an arena in the dirt formed.

With a roar, Khul leapt at Jactos and battle was joined.

Neros finally caught sight of Jactos through the fray, and saw his Lord-Celestant assailed on all sides.

‘He fights the Lord of Khorne,’ he rasped, powerless to intervene.

Even from a distance, the duel looked fearsome. Khul’s sheer aggression and apparent strength would test any Stormcast, but Jactos weathered and parried every attack. His riposte was lightning fast and telling. Khul took a hard hammer blow against his chest and fell back.

Jactos was winning… and Neros dared to hope, wishing he were by his Lord-Celestant’s side.

But as he battled alongside his comrades in a sea of foes, all the Lord-Castellant could do was watch.

An ever diminishing circle of warriors fought beside Jactos. Only a few Liberators and Retributors from those Stormcasts separated off from Neros’s men remained. And though they battled like the heroes Sigmar had reforged them to be, they were not inviolate.

A Liberator fell, his shield split in two, his armour the same. A paladin crushed a khorgorath’s skull, only to be hacked apart by a dozen axe blows. It became an attritional grind, one the Stormcasts were destined to lose.

As the last of his men died, Jactos knew he fought alone. His world had shrunk down through the eye slits of his mask to focus on the brutal warlord trying to kill him and the scrap of earth upon which they fought.

He weaved aside as the axe came close, tearing sparks from his sigmarite armour, then replied with a thrust that Khul could barely turn away.

A hefty punch almost staggered him, and black slashes flared behind Jactos’s eyes. Ears ringing, he placed a kick into Khul’s guts and sent the warlord sprawling. He recovered quickly, on his feet before Jactos had a chance to kill him with a single decapitating blow. A clear note of sigmarite against daemon-forged metal rang discordantly as runeblade met axe of Khorne.

Jactos’s hammer struck armour, putting a crack in Khul’s pauldron and sending the warlord to his knees. Blood welled into the gap as Khul bellowed in pain and threw the Lord-Celestant back.

‘You cannot prevail,’ uttered Jactos, defiant despite being surrounded. ‘Sigmar will reclaim the Mortal Realms from tyranny.’

Rising to his feet, Khul laughed and spat up a gobbet of blood.

‘Look around. It’s already over, fool.’

Though Khul’s followers could have overwhelmed Jactos in moments, they were held back by the warlord’s will to meet the challenge alone. Even the hound was kept at bay. It had become a duel, one that Jactos realised he would likely not survive even if he did best Khul, a contest of arms pervaded by a strange sense of honour.

Then I shall return again, reforged to enact my vengeance, he vowed.

‘You’re wrong, scum,’ he told Khul. ‘It has only just begun!’

Jactos unleashed a hail of blows with blade and hammer against Khul, who still wielded his brutal axe in two hands. The warlord used the haft like a pole arm, warding off the Lord-Celestant’s attacks with surprising speed and restraint.

The might of Sigmar flowed through Jactos’s veins, and no Khornate tyrant could hope to match that. These Bloodbound curs had spent too long fighting emaciated tribesmen and harrying slaves; they had not fought warriors like the Stormcasts before.

‘Your reckoning has come!’ spat Jactos, hammering Khul’s defence as the warlord backed off.

A wild swing from the warlord was met with a deft parry against the haft of Jactos’s hammer. The Lord-Celestant then lunged with his runeblade, driving it into the meat of Khul’s thigh.

‘Not so easy to slay true warriors, is it, warmonger?’

Khul shook his head, staggering from the wound in his leg.

‘Know when you are beaten,’ Jactos declared, revelling now. He hacked down with hammer and blade as one, putting the warlord back on his knees again as he threw up a desperate defence.

Jactos should have finished his opponent, but instead kicked him away. Like most of the Stormcasts, he could remember parts of his past, the person he used to be and the life he had led. Those memories grew sharper during battle, and Jactos’s mind flooded with images of his burning village and the grinning barbarians who had tortured and goaded his kin.

He had a chance to redress the scales, and mete out punishment in kind for what was inflicted upon him and his own.

Another reckless swing by Khul was deflected with ease, as Jactos prepared to end it.

‘I prove your prophecy false, warlord,’ he said. ‘I have saved Vandus Hammerhand and thwarted you.’

The warhammer came down, but Khul caught it. With a savage snap, he broke the Lord-Celestant’s wrist and threw away the hammer.

Jactos tried to counter with his runeblade, but Khul attacked too quickly, inhumanly so, and cleaved his arm at the elbow. A golden forearm, the hand still gripping the sword, fell in front of Jactos who had trouble comprehending what had just happened. He could not stop staring at his severed limb, until the iron vice of Khul’s gauntleted hand wrapped around his throat.

‘There is something you should know about prophecies,’ Khul told him, heedless of the Lord-Celestant’s choking. ‘The beholder sees what they want to see, what they believe in their hearts to be true. I do not need the skull of Vendell Blackfist to crown my ascension. Yours will serve just as well.’

Khul released his grip, and the axe blade fell.

Neros cried out when he saw Jactos fall, head cut clean from his noble shoulders. His anguish turned to dismay when there was no lightning flash, no return to the heavens. No resurrection.

‘He is truly dead…’ the Lord-Castellant whispered, scarcely able to believe it.

It was an honourable end, but a permanent one. A death without hope.

Neros fought on, his voice hoarse from bellowing orders and urging his warriors to never surrender.

Only when he heard the trumpet call of Laudus Skythunder did he take heart and find reserves of strength he did not know he possessed.

‘Fight them!’ he roared. ‘To your very last. Hold on, brothers, for the Hammerhands are with us! The Hammerhands are with us!’

Oblivious to the ongoing battle around him, Khul stooped to retrieve the immortal’s head. Part of the dead warrior’s helm had been smashed apart by the killing blow, and through the broken mask Khul saw the fear and confusion writ upon dead features.

‘Such arrogance,’ he murmured. ‘The cur expected to beat me.’

A shallow cleft had been left behind where the axe had cut reality itself. It soon closed, but within the sliver Khul saw the realm beyond, the realm of his master he so desired to ascend to. And that was not all. A remnant, little more than a vague shadow and a near-silent scream, persisted where the warrior had stood before his death. The blade had cleaved his soul as well as his body, cutting the tether between Aqshy and the celestial heavens from where he had been cast.